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THE 



Voyage of Life 



A JOURNEY 



J't[om M §jndk to i\t mxmt 

J J J 



COMPILED BY 

S. L." LOUIS, D. D., 

Author of "Decorum,*' "Morality of Manners,*' Etc., Etc. 



ILLUSTRATED. 



SOLD B Y SUB SCRIP TION jONL KL n 
"*JGHr"*$. 



1380. .^ 
, * V -*^5S 
UNION PUBLISHING HOUSE 

NEW YORK AND CINCINNATI. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S79, by 

J. A. RUTH & CO., 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The Voyage of Life is before us ; and on 
this sublime voyage to the land of immortals, 
to the Palace Beautiful in the skies, let us 
start from the dear old home of childhood, 
that home which, though it may be desolate, 
is still imperishable in memory. 

Let our destined port be the home of the 
blessed, the city which hath foundations, whose 
builder and maker is God. 

This voyage is a solemn fact ; we have 
started upon it ; let us try to understand it ; 
let us grapple with its mysteries ; let us think 
much of its responsibilities ; let us ponder the 
thoughts of the inquiring minds of past ages ; 
let us prize all the light we have from man — 
from God, so that we may be guided aright 
amid its perils and changing experiences. 

Above all things let us remember what 
life is. It is not breathing, moving, playing, 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

sleeping, simply. Life is a battle. All thought- 
ful people see it so. A battle between evil 
and good from childhood. Good influences, 
drawing us up toward the Divine ; bad influ- 
ences, drawing us down towards the brute. 
Midway we stand between the Divine and the 
brute. How to cultivate the good side of the 
nature is the greatest lesson of life to teach. 
Far above physical courage — which will lead 
us to face the cannon's mouth — above wealth, 
— which would give us farms, and houses, and 
bank stocks, and gold — is moral courage. That 
courage by which we will stand fearlessly, 
frankly, firmly, for the right. Every man or 
woman who dares to stand for the right when 
evil has its legions, is the true moral victor in 
this life, and in the land beyond the stars. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

PAGE 

THE VOYAGE OF LIFE n 

II. 
INFANCY 22 

III. 
CHILDHOOD 30 

IV. 
NOT ONE CHILD TO SPARE 43 

V. 
THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 46 

VI. 
BOYS 55 

VII. 
GIRLS 67 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

VIII. 

PAGE 

YOUNG MEN 71 

IX. 
YOUNG WOMEN 86 

X. 
BROTHERS AND SISTERS 101 

XI. 
MAN no 

XII. 
WOMAN 117 

XIII. 
HOME 128 

XIV. 
MOTHERS 143 

XV. 
TIRED MOTHERS 155 

XVI. 
RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS 157 

XVII. 
AMUSEMENTS 163 



CONTENTS. 7 

XVIII. 



PAGE 

ASSOCIATIONS 168 



XIX. 
FRIENDSHIP 179 

XX. 
INFLUENCE 188 

XXI. 
INTEMPERANCE. 194 

XXII. 
INDOLENCE 198 

XXIII. 
INTEGRITY 203 

XXIV. 
GENIUS 207 

XXV. 
TACT 211 

XXVI. 
ECONOMY 215 

XXVII. 
INDUSTRY 223 



8 CONTENTS. 

XXVIII. 

PAGE 

SELF-CULTURE 230 

XXIX. 
CHARACTER . . 235 

XXX. 
VICE 244 

XXXI. 
POVERTY 250 

XXXII. 
ABILITY AND OPPORTUNITY 256 

XXXIII. 
BEAUTY 260 

XXXIV. 
LOVE 267 

XXXV. 
COURTSHIP 274 

XXXVI. 
MARRIAGE 283 

XXXVII. 
AFTER MARRIAGE 294 



CONTENTS. 9 

XXXVIII. 

PAGE 

ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK 310 

XXXIX. 
TELL YOUR WIFE 318 

XL. 
COURTESY AT HOME 321 

XLI. 
HOME GOVERNMENT 325 

XLII. 
BROKEN TIES 336 

XLIII. 
BREVITY OF LIFE 339 

XLIV. 
THE SILENT SHORE 344 



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§« \m wM m mxxj k \ ®ft* tUxmX «p 
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y §W\xu\ ixmx Mxt torn af #<j^, wftile i\xt %xm% 
©f mirtvw ftaw ftut life* gonw p^iwg raw. 

— Byron. 






The Voyage of Life. 




THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 

IFE is the spring-time of eternity— a 
voyage to the grave. The sea we 
have to navigate, viewed in prospect, 
looks smooth and inviting ; but beneath, it 
conceals shoals, quick sands, and rocks ; and 
great multitudes in attempting to reach the 
distant shores are shipwrecked and lost. No 
man knows his destiny. We pass our lives 
in regretting the past, complaining of the 
present, and indulging false hopes of the 
future. Every anniversary of a birth-day is 
the dispelling of a dream. We aspire and 
aspire and then give in. Life in this par- 
ticular is like a coffin, which widens up to a 
certain point, and then tapers off again. 
Happy the man who sees a God employed in 
all the good and ill that chequer life. 



12 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 

Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty 
river. Our boat at first glides down the nar- 
row channel, through the playful murmurings 
of the little brook and the windings of its grassy 
borders. The trees shed their blossoms over 
our young heads ; the flowers seem to offer 
themselves to our young hands ; we are happy 
in hope, and grasp eagerly at the beauties 
around us, but the stream hurries us on, and 
still our hands are empty. Our course in youth 
and manhood is along a deeper and wider chan- 
nel, among objects more striking and mag- 
nificent. We are animated at the moving pic- 
tures and enjoyment and industry all around 
us ; we are excited at some short-lived dis- 
appointment. The stream bears us on, and 
our joys and griefs are alike behind us. We 
may be shipwrecked, but we cannot be de- 
layed. Whether rough or smooth, the river 
hastens on until the roar of the ocean is in our 
ears and the tossine of the waves is beneath 
our feet, and the floods are lifted up around 
us, and we take leave of earth and its inhabi- 
tants, until of our future voyage there is no 
witness save the Infinite and Eternal. 

The great art and philosophy of life is to make 



THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 13 

the best of the present, whether it be good or 
bad ; and to bear the one with resignation and 
patience, and to enjoy the other with thank- 
fulness and moderation. Are we brought into 
the world, and allowed to occupy a place in 
it, only that we may pursue trifles ! that we 
may brutishly gratify our appetites and pas- 
sions! that we may leave the world at last, 
perhaps at the expiration of three score years 
and ten, without having derived any advan- 
tage from being in it, or conferring a single 
benefit upon it ! Memory goes like a resur- 
rectionist to the graves of our past errors and 
crimes, and shows us their skeletons. The 
conventional robes in which we dressed them 
to make them seemly are gone — the tinsel of 
subterfuge and sophistry with which we be- 
decked their loathsomeness has fallen away — 
self-deception is no longer possible, and we 
shrink from the foul offspring of our misguided 
souls, but cannot, dare not repudiate them. If 
the young doubt the vraisemblance of this 
picture, let them ask the old, and they will 
learn that its drawing is correct and its tints 
true. Ah, if the man of the world were only 
as careful to consult his conscience on points 



14 THE VOYAGE OE LIEE. 

of moral right, as to consult his lawyer on 
points of law, how much misery would he not 
escape both in his life of action and his life of 
afterthought. 

We have often been impressed by the deep 
significance of the phrase which Dickens has 
given as a title to one of his Christmas stories, 
" The Battle of Life." It is full of solemn mean- 
ings. All our hours, from the cradle to the grave, 
are but a series of antagonisms. Hunger, fa- 
tigue, sickness, temptation, sin, remorse, sor- 
row — these are the strong powers with which 
we must wage continual war. Foes beset us 
from without and from within, and make life' 
one lono- and earnest battle. But there are 
victories to be won on the field, more glorious 
than those which crimsoned Marathon and 
Waterloo. Evil habits may be subdued — 
fiery passions brought under the control of 
principle — temptations resisted — self-denial 
cheerfully sustained, and life itself consecrated 
to high and holy purposes. To triumph over 
the infirmities of a perverted nature, and ren- 
der life, once deformed by passion and stained 
by sin, beautiful with love made manifest in 
deeds of beneficence, is worthier our ambition 



THE VOYAGE OE LIEE. i5 

than all the blood-wrought heroism that ever 
linked a name to a world's remembrance. 
Every day witnesseth triumphs such as these 
— yet fame proclaims them not. What matters 
it ? In the serene depths of these all conquer- 
ing spirits, God's peace abides, and harmonies 
are heard, such as the angels make, when they 
welcome the victorious soul from the conflicts 
of this, to the raptures of the heavenly world. 

We have been watching with intense in- 
terest, a man's journey up the roof of yonder 
building. It may be some sixty feet to the top, 
and his only foothold and dependence is a frail 
ladder, that shakes with his every step. It is 
a fearful thing to hang thus suspended — one 
round loosened, his hold is lost, and death is 
certain. We are all going up the. steep ladder 
of life, and we are not so sure as he that the 
round before us is not loose. Let us take heed 
— like him, be slow and sure ; like him feel 
that we hang midway between earth and the 
grave ; like him hold closely on to the sides, 
God's providences, and as he at lasts mounts to 
the top, there to rest from his labors, so shall 
we attain to Heaven, not like him for a transient 
hour, but a whole and delightful eternity. 



1 6 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 

That state is capable of the greatest enjoy- 
ment where necessity urges, but not painful- 
ly ; where effort is required, but as much as 
possible without anxiety ; where the spring 
and summer of life are preparatory to the 
harvest of autumn and the repose of winter. 
Then is every season sweet, and in a well spent 
life, the last the best — the season of calm en- 
joyment the richest in recollections, the bright- 
est in hope. Good training and a fair start 
constitute a more desirable patrimony than 
wealth ; and those parents who study their 
children's welfare rather than the gratification 
of their own avarice or vanity, would do well 
to think of this. Is it better to run a success- 
ful race, or to begin and end at the goal ? Life 
has an ultimate purpose. We are not ap- 
pointed to pass through this life, barely that 
we may live. We are not impelled, both by 
disposition and necessity, to buy and sell, bare- 
ly that we may get it. There is an end in 
business beyond supply. There is an object 
in the acquisition of wealth beyond success. 
There is a final cause of human traffic ; and 
that is Virtue ! 

The laugh of mirth which vibrates through 



THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 17 

the heart ; the tears which freshen the dry 
wastes within ; the music which brings child- 
hood back ; the prayer that calls the future 
near ; the doubt which makes us meditate ; 
the death which startles us with mystery ; the 
hardships that force us to struggle ; the anxiety 
that ends in trust — these are the true nourish- 
ments of our natural bein^. 

Life is no speculative adventure with those 
who feel its value and duties. It has a deeper 
purpose, and its path becomes distinct and 
easy in proportion as it is earnestly and faith- 
fully pursued. The rudest or the most refined 
pursuit, if adapted to the wants and capacities 
of the pursuer, has a truth, a beauty, and a 
satisfaction. All ships on the ocean are not 
steamers or packets, but all freight bearers, 
fitted to their tasks ; and the smallest shallop 
nobly fulfills its mission, while it pushes on to- 
ward its destined port, nor shifts its course 
because ships career to other points of the 
compass. Let man ride himself on the ocean 
of Time. Let him learn by nature whether 
he is a shallop or a ship, a coaster or an ocean 
steamer ; and then freighting himself accord- 
ing to his capacity and the market he should 



1 8 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 

seek, fling his sail to the breeze, riding with 
wind and tide, if they go his course, but beat- 
ing resolutely against them if they cross his 
path. 

Almost every man wastes part of his life in 
attempts to display qualities which he does 
not possess, and to gain applause which he 
cannot keep. We often speak of being "set- 
tled in life." We might as well speak of an- 
choring in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean. 
Like the leaf, life has its fading. We speak 
and think of it with sadness, just as we think of 
the Autumn season. But there should be no 
sadness at the fading of a life that has done 
well its work. ' If we rejoice at the advent of 
a new life, if we welcome the coming of a new 
pilgrim to the uncertainties of this world's 
way, why should there be so much gloom 
when all these uncertainties are passed, and 
life at its waning wears the. glory of a compe- 
tent task ? Beautiful as is childhood in its 
freshness and innocence, its beauty is that of 
untried life. It is the beauty of promise, of 
Spring, of the bud. A holier and rarer beauty 
is the beauty which the waning life of faith 
and duty wears. It is the beauty of a thing 



THE VOYAGE OE LIEE. 



*9 



completed ; and as men come together to con- 
gratulate each other when some great work 
has been achieved, and see in its concluding 
nothing but gladness, so ought we to feel when 
the setting sun flings back its beams upon a 
life that has answered well life's purpose. 
When the bud drops blighted, and the mildew 
blasts the early grain, and there goes all hope 
of the harvest, one may well be sad ; but 
when the ripened year sinks amid its garni- 
ture of Autumn flowers and leaves, why should 
we regret or murmur ? And so a life that is 
ready and waiting for the " well done " of God, 
whose latest virtues and charities are the no- 
blest, should be given back to God in uncom- 
plaining reverence, we rejoicing that the earth 
is capable of so much goodness, and is permit- 
ted such virtue. Like flakes of snow that fall 
unperceived upon the earth, the seemingly un- 
important events of life succeed one another. 
Thus imperceptibly and swiftly life passes 
away. Life's moments are ever fleeting ; the 
generations of men come and pass away like 
the leaves of the forest : as the year blooms 
and fades, so does human life. 

Men seldom think of the great event of 



20 THE VOYAGE OE LIFE. 

death until the shadows fall across their own 
path, hiding forever from their eyes the traces 
of loved ones whose living smiles were the 
sunlight of their existence. Death is the great 
antagonist of life, and the cold thought of the 
tomb is the skeleton of all feasts. We do not 
want to go through the dark valley, although 
its passage may lead to paradise ; and with 
Charles Lamb, we do not want to lie down in 
the muddy grave, even with kings and princes 
for our bed-fellows. But the fiat of nature is 
inexorable, there is no appeal from the great 
law which dooms us to dust. We flourish and 
we fade as the leaves of the forest ; and the 
flowers that bloom and wither in a day have 
not a frailer hope upon life than the mightiest 
monarch that ever shook the earth with his 
footsteps. Generations of men appear and 
vanish as the grass, and the countless multi- 
tude which fills the world to-day, will to-mor- 
row disappear as the footsteps on the shore. 
This is life. If we die to-day, the sun will 
shine as brightly and the birds sing as sweetly 
to-morrow. Business will not be suspended a 
moment, and the great mass will not bestow a 
thought upon our memories. Is he dead ? will 



THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 2 I 

be the solemn inquiry of a few as they pass to 
their work. But no one will miss us except 
our immediate connections, and in a short time 
they will forget us, and laugh as merrily as 
when we sat beside them. Thus shall we all, 
now active in life, pass away. Our children 
crowd close behind us, and they will soon be 
gone. In a few years not a living being can 
say, " I remember him ! We lived in another 
age, and have no business with those who 
slumber in the tomb." This is life ; how 
rapidly it passes ! 

" So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go, not like the quarry-slave at night 
Scourged to his dungeon ; but sustained and 

soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 




II. 




INFANCY. 

BABE in a house is a well-spring of 
pleasure, a messenger of peace and 
love, a resting-place for innocence 
on earth ; a link between angels and men. 

A babe is a mother's anchor, she cannot 
go far from her moorings. And yet a true 
mother never lives so little in the present as 
when by the side of the cradle. Her thoughts 
follow the imagined future of her child. That 
babe is the boldest of pilots, and guides her fear- 
less thoughts down through scenes of coming 
years. The old ark never made such a voyage 
as the cradle daily makes. Maternity is the per- 
fecting, not only of womanhood, but humanity. 
And to the first baby, has God given the 
sacred power to complete the circle of human 
sympathies, to waken the conscious solidi- 
tary of human interests. Every mother that 

22 



INFANCY. . 23 

is a mother, pictures the whole troop of 
loves, joys, and sorrows hovering around 
" the first baby." She lays every mother's 
baby in the cradle which held her own first 
baby, and listens to the songs that gush forth, 
or as they are softly murmured in the mother- 
heart. To a mother's heart, every mother's 
baby is the representative of inestimable 
treasure ; it is an estate held in " fee simple ; " 
a little sub-soiler that leaves no affections 
fallow, no sympathies isolated from the claims 
of a common humanity. 

Welcome to the parents the puny struggler, 
strong" in his weakness, his little arms more 
irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched 
with persuasion which Chatham and Pericles 
in manhood had not. His unaffected lamenta- 
tions when he lifts up his voice on high ; or, 
more beautiful, the sobbing child — the face all 
liquid grief, as he tries to swallow his vexation 
— soften all hearts to pity, and to mirthful and 
clamorous compassion. The small despot asks 
so little that all reason and all nature are on 
his side. His ignorance is more charming than 
all knowledge, and his little sins more be- 
witching than any virtue. His flesh is angel's 



24 



INFANCY. 



flesh, all alive. " Infancy," said Coleridge, 
" presents body and spirit in unity ; the body 
is all animated." All day, between his three 
or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon house, 
sputters and spurs, and puts on his faces of 
importance, and when he fasts, the little 
Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before 
him. By lamplight, he delights in shadows on 
the Avail ; by daylight, in yellow and scarlet. 
Carry him out of doors — he is overpowered 
by the light and by the extent of natural ob- 
jects, and is silent. 

The first baby ! — why, it brings treasures 
with it ! True, its little hand is empty ; but 
then it brings to light and activity unrevealed 
capacities, looses the sealed fountains, and 
assays the unwrought treasure of the human 
soul. It is not all ^oy — that baby gift ; — if it 
were it could not be a joy forever. It is not 
all sorrow ; if it were, the fountains of the 
heart it stirs, could not grow pure to reflect 
the heaven above ; would not flow down the 
stream of time, bearing rich freight for un- 
known and unborn posterity. But see, it lays 
its tiny hand on the heart, and it forgets to 
beat for self. It pillows its soft cheek on the 



INFANCY. 



25 



bosom that, hitherto, had looked out upon 
the struggling world — all unlinked to its wants, 
all unmoved by its destiny — and henceforth 
that bosom is the asylum of the orphan, the 
refuge of the oppressed, the sanctuary which 
invites a world lying in wretchedness to the 
banquet of love, to the smiles of a common 
Father. And why ? — Ah, that baby is the 
medium through which the helplessness, the 
wants and the promise of humanity have ap- 
pealed to the woman. In behalf of the race, 
it has whispered mother ! and looking into its 
trusting, worshipping eyes, she accepts the 
consecration, answers the appeal with a deep, 
an eternity echoed — my child. 

No one feels the death of a child as a 
mother feels it. The father cannot feel it thus. 
True, there is a vacancy' in his home and a 
heaviness in his heart. There is a chain of 
association that at set times comes round with 
a broken link — there are memories of endear- 
ment, a keen sense of loss, a weeping over 
crushed hopes, and a pain of wounded affec- 
tion. But the mother feels that one has been 
taken away who was still closer to her heart. 
Hers has been the office of constant ministra- 



26 INFANCY. 

tion. Every graduation of feature developed 
before her eyes ; she detected every new 
gleam of infant intelligence ; she heard the first 
utterance of every stammering word ; she was 
the refuge of its fears, the supply of its wants ; 
and every task of affection wove a new link, 
and made dear to her its object. And when 
her child dies, a portion of her own life as it 
were dies with it. How can she give her dar- 
ling up, with all these living memories, these 
fond associations ? The timid hands that have 
so often taken in trust and love, how can she 
fold them on its sinless breast, and surrender 
them to Death ? The feet whose wanderings 
she watched so narrowly, how can she see 
them straightened to go down into the dark 
valley ? The head that she had pressed to her 
lips and bosom, that she has watched in peace- 
ful slumber and in burning sickness, a hair of 
which she could not see harmed, oh, how can 
she consign it to the dark chamber of the 
grave? It was a gleam of sunshine and a 
voice of perpetual gladness in her home ; she 
had learned from it blessed lessons of sim- 
plicity, sincerity, purity, faith ; it had unsealed 
within her a gushing, never-ebbing tide of affec- 



INFANCY. 27 

tion ; when suddenly it was taken away, and 
that home is left dark and silent ; and to the 
vain and heart-rending aspiration, " Shall that 
dear child never return again ? " there breaks 
in response, through the cold gray silence, 
" Nevermore — oh, nevermore ! " The heart 
is like a forsaken mansion, and that word goes 
echoing through its desolate chambers. And 
yet, fond mother ! (" Time brings such wonder- 
ous easing,") thou wilt in after years look back, 
with a not unpleasing sadness, even upon this 
scene of grief : 

EMPTY CRADLES. 

Mrs. Georgie A. H. McLeod. 

Oh, the empty, empty cradles, 

That must now be put away, 
For the little ones will need them 

Never more by night or day, 
For the pure and dreamless sleepers, 

Never more they'll rock to rest, 
Their bright heads upon the pillows, 

Shall no more be softly prest ! 

In the still and solemn nightfall, 
Death's pale angel noiseless sped, 

" I have gathered only Lilies, 
For my Lord, to-day," he said ; 



28 INFANCY. 

Oh, the Lilies, the White Lilies, 

That made earthly homes so bright, 

How many, many buds are missing, 
Since the happy morning light ! 

Waxen hands, with blossoms in them, 

Faces very white and fair, 
Curtained eyes, like hidden star-light, 

Silken rings of sunny hair. 
Hushed and still, we gaze upon them 

And we scarcely know our loss ; 
But to-morrow we shall feel it, 

Almost crushed beneath the cross. 

Little robes, so richly broidered, 

Wrought with so much love and pride 
Dainty laces, pale, pure ribbons, 

They must all be laid aside ; 
For in glorious robes of brightness 

Are the little ones arrayed, 
All unstained by earth the whiteness, 

Such a little while they stayed. 

Ah, the busy, busy mornings, 

And the nights of anxious care ; 
Now, there is no need of watching, 

There'll be time enough to spare. 
There's no baby's voice, we'll listen, 

Thinking that we hear it oft ; 
On our face no baby fingers, 

Touches like the rose leaves soft. 



INFANCY. 29 

Never mind the noisy household, 

Nor loud foot-falls on the stair, 
'Twill not wake the peaceful sleeper, 

There's no baby anywhere. 
In a casket, white as snow-flakes, 

Nestling all among the flowers, 
Are the pure and stainless Lilies, 

That a little while were ours. 

In our dreams 'midst dazzling brightness, 

And a rapturous burst of song, 
Through our tears, we saw above us, 

Oh ! the radiant spirit throng ! 
In their arms so softly cradled 

Our own little ones we know, 
And we hear them whisper gently, 

" The White Lilies from below." 

Wide the shining gates are opened, 

For the children are at home, 
Back to us, come the sweet echoes, 

" Oh, suffer them to come ! " 
Put away the empty cradles, 

Keep we only in our sight 
That bright glimpse of the fair dwelling 

Which the children have to-night. 



III. 



CHILDHOOD. 

And say to parents what a holy charge 
Is theirs ; with what a kingly power their love 
Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind. 
Warn them to wake at early dawn and sow 
Good seed, before the world has sown its tares. 



||^ HE child is father of the man. Men 
3^B| are but children of a larger growth. 

m f* How often do we meet with this 
array of words! Yet how insensible Ave are 
to the profound philosophy they enwrap. See 
yonder group of children now playing together 
— like birds among the blossoms of earth, 
haunting all the green shadowy places, and 
rejoicing in the bright air ; happy and beauti- 
ful faces, and as changeable as happy, with 
eyes brimful of joy, and with hearts playing 
upon their little faces like sunshine upon clear 
waters ; among- those who are now 



idling to- 



CHILDHOOD. 



31 



gether on that slope, or hunting butterflies to- 
gether on the edge of that wood, — you see our 
future men and women, not only the gifted 
and the powerful, the wise and the eloquent, 
the ambitious and the renowned, but the wick- 
ed and the treacherous, the abandoned profli- 
gate and the faithless husband, the gambler, 
the drunkard and the robber. 

Among them, and that other little troop just 
appearing, children with yet happier faces and 
pleasanter eyes, the blossoms of the future — 
the mothers of nations, the unfaithful wife and 
the broken-hearted husband, the proud be- 
trayer and his pale victim, the living and breath- 
ing portents and prodigies, the embodied vir- 
tues and vices, of another age and of another 
world. If this picture be true, parents, what a 
responsible charge you have. To you are 
entrusted these beautiful gems of God, and 
He will hold you responsible for their proper 
culture. Upon your training will rest their 
future destiny and a nation's hope. How im- 
portant then that parents should remember the 
words of Archbishop Leighton, who says, " Fill 
the bushel with good wheat, and there will be 
no room for chaff and rubbish/' This is a eood 



3 2 



CHILDHOOD. 



thought for every mother while tending her 
children., and watching the growth of their 
power in body and mind. 

" As soon as they be born," the Bible says, 
" children go astray speaking lies." So soon, 
therefore, will a Christian mother begin to 
" train her child in the way he should go," 
that good habits may be formed, ready to carry 
out good principles as the child grows old 
enough to understand the reason for his con- 
duct. 

Not without design has God implanted in 
the maternal breast that strong love of her 
children which is felt everywhere. This lays 
deep and broad the foundation for the child's 
future education from parental hands. Nor 
without designs has Christ commanded, ''Feed 
my lambs," — meaning to inculcate upon his 
Church the duty of caring for the children of 
the Church and the world at the earliest pos- 
sible period. Nor can parents and all well- 
wishers to humanity be too earnest and careful 
to fulfill the promptings of their very nature 
and the command of Christ in this matter. In- 
fluence is as quiet and imperceptible on the 
child's mind as the falling of snow flakes on the 




Mm 



CHILDHOOD. 33 

meadow. One cannot tell the hour when the 
human mind is not in condition of receiving 
impressions from exterior moral forces. In 
innumerable instances, the most secret and 
unnoticed influences have been in operation 
for months and even years to break down the 
strongest barriers of the human heart, and work 
out its moral ruin, while yet the fondest parents 
and friends have been unaware of the working 
of such unseen agents of evil. Not all at once 
does any heart become utterly bad. The error 
is in this : that parents are not conscious how 
early the seeds of vice are sown and take root. 
It is as the Gospel declares, " While men slept, 
the enemy came and sowed tares, and went his 
way." 

Grown persons are apt to put a lower esti- 
mate than is just, on the understanding of chil- 
dren. They rate them by what they know ; 
and children know very little ; but their com- 
prehension is great. Hence the continual won- 
der of those who are unaccustomed to them, 
at the old fashioned ways of some lone little 
one, who has no play- fellows — and at the odd 
mixture of the folly and wisdom in its say- 
ings. A continual battle goes on in the child's 
3 



34 



CHILDHOOD. 



mind, between what it knows and what it com- 
prehends. Its answers are foolish from partial 
ignorance ; and wise from extreme quickness 
of apprehension. The great art of education 
is so to train this last faculty as neither to de- 
press nor over-exert it. The matured medi- 
ocrity of many an infant prodigy proves both 
the degree of expansion in which it is possible 
to force a child's intellect, and the boundary 
which nature has set to the success of such 
false culture. 

A majority of character, throughout civil- 
ized society, gets its mood and bent from home 
influences. Education, it has been well said, 
forms the common mind, and home influences 
are the most impressive common educators. 
Good or bad, their potency is the same. 

Do not command children, under six years 
of age to keep anything secret, not even the 
pleasure you may be preparing as a surprise 
for a dear friend. The cloudless heaven of 
youthful openheartedness should not be over- 
cast, not even by the rosy dawn of shyness ; 
otherwise, children will soon learn to conceal 
their own secrets as well as yours. 

We desire to enter a protest against the 



CHILDHOOD. 3 5 

fashion among many mothers, of referring their 
children to " father," in matters that require 
the exercise of judgment and discretion. 
Of course it is wrong for parents to discuss 
such matters before their children. What we 
mean to say is, that the equal sovereignty of 
parents should be an unquestioned thing in the 
minds of children. There should be no such 
thing as an appeal from the decisions of the 
one to the other with hope of a reversal of 
judgment. Mothers who evade such duty, not 
only depreciate their own value in the eyes of 
their children, but serve to weaken and render 
valueless the judgment and wisdom of women 
in general, in the estimation of both their sons 
and daughters. Women often feel suspicious 
of the excellence of their own judgment, and 
are prone to appeal to men for ultimate deci- 
sions. In the " long run" of affairs, the judg- 
ment of women is really superior to that of 
men. The difference lies in the conscience and 
the decisive qualities. In the management 
and training of children, a faulty decision now 
and then, is not so fatal in result, as a contin- 
ually wavering and negative manner. Do not 
infer from this, that all matters pertaining to 



36 CHILDHOOD. 

children should be decided at once, and never 
deviated from. There are many times when 
a child should be allowed to plead his own 
cause, and parents can never be too sympa- 
thetic with their children. A lack of it con- 
stitutes the direct griefs of childhood. 

A sagacious observer says : — " When I see 
children going to their father for comfort, I 
am sure there is something wrong with their 
mother." 

Do not make too much of their mistakes and 
faults. How can one be a child and not be 
full of faults ? Explain their mistakes gently. 
Be patient ! Wait for them ! Children must 
have time to grow. Somebody had to wait 
for you. Never let fear make a gulf between 
the child and you. Within due bounds liberty 
is the best thing for a child, as it is for a man. 
It will lead to irregularities, but out of these 
will come experience, and, gradually, self-con- 
trol. The object of all family government is 
to teach children to get along without being 
governed. They must therefore be trusted ; 
even if they abuse it, they must be trusted. 
Keep them busy with pleasant work, if possi- 
ble. Awaken in them curiosity about the 



CHILDHOOD. 



37 



things which lie around them. A very little 
instruction will make children curious of plants, 
minerals, natural history, of literary curiosities, 
autographs, postage-stamp collections, and a 
thousand things which will inspire pleasure in 
their reason rather than in their appetites. 

Do unto children, always, even as ye, when 
ye were children, would have been done by. 
Thus, reader, shall you enlarge and soften 
many an intellect and heart ; thus prevent 
many a home being made sad and desolate 
by domestic bitterness. 

Everybody's rights seem to be recognized 
and talked about but the children's ; and yet 
we venture to say that those of none are in- 
fringed upon more than theirs. We who 
are not so far removed from childhood, either 
in accumulation of years or lack of sympathy, 
can remember how many childish grievances 
we had — how dreadful they seemed to us then, 
and of how little importance the rules some- 
times have seemed since we looked back with 
older eyes. It is well to look at these things 
in our dealings with our children, who are 
governed and scolded and found fault with far 
too much. Dr. Hall, in his excellent work of 



38 CHILDHOOD. 

" Health by Good Living," gives parents a 
good piece of advice in telling them to let the 
children alone when they gather around the 
family table. It is a cruelty to hamper them 
with manifold rules and regulations about this, 
and that, and the other. As long as their con- 
duct is harmless as to others, encourage them 
in their cheeriness. Suppose a child does not 
sit as straight as a ramrod at the table ; sup- 
pose a cup or tumbler slips through his little 
fingers and deluges the plate of food below, 
and the goblet is smashed, and the table-cloth 
is ruined ; do not look a thousand scowls and 
thunders, and scare the poor thing to the bal- 
ance of its death, for it was scared half to 
death before ; it "did not go to do it." Did 
you never let a glass slip through your fingers 
since you were grown ? Instead of sending 
the child away from the table in anger, if not 
even with a threat for this or any other little 
nothing, be as generous as you would to an 
equal or superior guest to whom you would, with 
amore orless obsequious smile, "it is of no pos- 
sible consequence." That would be the form 
of expression even to a stranger guest, and 
yet to your own child you remorselessly, and 



CHILDHOOD. 



39 



revengefully, and angrily mete out a swift pun- 
ishment, which for the time almost breaks its 
heart, and belittles you amazingly. The pro- 
per and more enlightened mode of dealing out 
reproof to the child, when it seems necessary, 
is to take no notice of mishaps or bad behavior 
at the time, or to go further, and divert atten- 
tion from them at the very instant, if possible, 
or to make a kind apology for them ; but af- 
terwards, in an hour or two, or better still, 
next day, draw the child's attention to the 
fault, if fault it is, in a friendly and loving 
manner ; point out the impropriety in some 
kindly way ; show where it was wrong or rude, 
and appeal to the child's self-respect or manli- 
ness. This is the best way to correct all family 
errors. Sometimes it may not succeed ; some- 
times harsh measures may be required ; but 
try the deprecating or the kindly method with 
equanimity of mind, and failure will be of rare 
occurrence. Never mar home life by cross 
words or peevishness. 

This world is full of rough places, and its 
jagged features are as frequently seen in the 
faces around us, as in its rocks and caverns. 
The father, stern and unyielding, drives sun- 



4Q 



CHILDHOOD. 



shine from the house, or the mother, full of 
responsibility, cuffs the children into corners, 
and has order and neatness at the expense of 
their liberty and happiness. Perhaps a youth 
of seventeen presumes to govern, and ma and 
children must keep still. The novel-reading 
young lady becomes horribly nervous if the 
little ones touch the sofa on which she reclines. 
The girl in the kitchen frowns them out of her 
presence, or scolds them, without shame. 
Poor little things ! how much they seem to be 
in the way. One moment petted and carried 
in our bosoms, the next cuffed and abused as 
if the cause of all our trials. A disagreement 
between parents is frequently revenged upon 
the children, and every careless act is laid to 
their charge. A lost spoon, a broken china, a 
misplaced book, is referred to them, and before 
they can command language to defend them- 
selves, they take it for granted that pa, ma, big 
brother and sister must be right and they 
wrong. Where is the wisdom in saying to a 
child, be a man ? If the mind be curbed and 
humbled too much in children — if their spirits 
be abased and broken by too strict a hand over 
them — they lose all their vigor and industry. 



CHILDHOOD. 



41 



Make room for children. Room and free- 
dom for them at home, that they may expand 
and strengthen those faculties and functions 
which are soon to constitute the man-and- 
womanhood of a generation. Room for them 
in the nursery and on the play-ground, with 
opportunity and freedom to exercise, if you 
would have them hearty, cheerful, and home- 
loving. Too much, in the main, are children 
burrowed and quashed at home, where they 
should be encouraged to gambol and rejoice — 
at home, where their voices should ring out 
merry as the voices of summer birds. Room 
for the children at school. At school, where 
they are too often imprisoned, stifled, and 
dwarfed in body and mind. Room and free- 
dom for the children at school, that they may 
breathe fresh air and commune with their 
teachers, not as masters — stern, unbending 
andunsympathising — but as intellectual guides 
and social friends. Room for the children at 
church, too, and see that they are attracted — 
as they can be — thither, and not driven with 
the " rod of correction," or the chilling rebuke. 
More room, greater care for, and a higher 
common estimate of children, if you would 



42 



CHILDHOOD. 



stimulate their ambition to win your regard. 
Children are generally older, more observing, 
and more capable than they seem. The less 
you ignore them, the less will they ignore you. 
The more you cultivate them, the more will 
they cultivate you. Give them no room, teach 
them to think you believe them nobodies, and 
ten to one they will strive to justify such a 
belief. Room for the children, God's holiest 
and tenderest blessing — the light of our homes 
and the delight of our hearts. Room for them 
everywhere, and not least in the public place, 
the public conveyance, at the public table. 
Tuck them not in a corner, crowd them not 
to the wall, leave them not forever to the 
second course and the fragments of the feast, 
unless you would have them grow up thought- 
less of justice and selfish as yourselves, to 
practice, in turn upon their children as you 
practice upon them. 




IV. 




NOT ONE CHILD TO SPARE* 

HICH shall it be ? Which shall it be ? " 
I looked at John — John looked at me, 
(Dear, patient John, who loves me yet, 
As well as though my locks were jet), 
And when I found that I must speak, 
My voice seemed strangely low and weak ; 
" Tell me again what Robert said ! " 
And then I, listening, bent my head. 
" This is his letter : — ' I will give 
A house and land while you shall live, 
If, in return, from out your seven, 
One child to me for aye is given.' " 
I looked at John's old garments worn, 
I thought of all that John had borne 
Of poverty, and work, and care, 
Which I, though willing, could not share ; 
I thought of seven mouths to feed, 
Of seven little children's need, 



*A father and mother in straitened circumstances, with seven 
children, were offered by a wealthy but childless neighbor a com- 
fortable provision, on condition that they would give him one of 
their children. This beautiful poem tells the result. 

43 



44 



NOT ONE CHILD TO SPARE. 

And then of this : — " Come, John," said I, 

" We'll choose among them as they lie 

Asleep ; " so, walking hand in hand, 

Dear John and I surveyed our band — 

First to the cradle lightly stepped, 

Where Lilian, the baby, slept. 

A glory 'gainst the pillow white ; 

Softly the father stooped to lay 

His rough hand down in loving way, 

When dream or whisper made her stir, 

And huskily he said, " Not her, not her." 

We stooped beside the trundle-bed, 

And one long ray of lamplight shed 

Athwart the boyish faces there, 

In sleep so pitiful and fair ; 

I saw on Jamie's rough, red cheek 

A tear undried. Ere John could speak, 

" He's but a baby, too," said I, 

And kissed him as we hurried by. 

Pale, patient Robbie's angel face 

Still in his sleep bore suffering's trace. 

" No, for a thousand crowns, not him," 

He whispered, while our eyes were dim. 

Poor Dick ! bad Dick ! our wayward son, 

Turbulent, reckless, idle one — 

Could he be spared ? " Nay, He who gave 

Bid us befriend him to his grave ; 

Only a mother's heart can be 

Patient enough for such as he ; 

And so," said John, " I would not dare 

To send him from her bedside prayer." 



NOT ONE CHILD TO SPARE. 4 5 

Then stole we softly up above 

And knelt by Mary, child of love. 

" Perhaps for her 'twould better be," 

I said to John. Quite silently 

He lifted up a curl that lay 

Across her cheek in willful way, 

And shook his head, " Nay, love, not thee," 

The while my heart beat audibly. 

Only one more, our eldest lad, 

Trusty and truthful, good and glad — 

So like his father. " No, John, no — 

I cannot, will not, let him go." 

And so we wrote, in courteous way, 

We could not drive one child away ; 

And afterward toil lighter seemed, 

Thinking of that of which we dreamed, 

Happy in truth that not one face 

Was missed from its accustomed place ; 

Thankful to work for all the seven, 

Trusting the rest to One in heaven. 




V. 




THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 

BABY has a right, too frequently de- 
nied it, to be let alone. It ought to 
be a rule in the nursery never to dis- 
turb the infant when it is happy and quiet. 
Older children, too, two, three, and four years 
of age, who are amusing themselves in a peace- 
ful, contented way, ought not to be wantonly 
interfered with. I have often seen a little 
creature lying in its crib cooing, laughing, 
crooning to itself in the sweetest baby fashion, 
without a care in the world to vex its com- 
posure, when in would come mamma or nurse, 
seize it, cover it with endearments, and ef- 
fectually break up its tranquility. Then, the 
next time, when these thoughtless people 
wanted it to be quiet, they were surprised 
that it refused to be so. It is habit and train- 
ing which makes little children restless and 

46 



THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 47 

fretful, rather than natural disposition, in a 
multitude of cases. A healthy babe, coolly 
and loosely dressed, judiciously fed, and fre- 
quently bathed, will be good and comfortable 
if it have not too much attention. But when 
it is liable a dozen times a day to be caught 
wildly up, bounced and jumped about, smo- 
thered with kisses, poked by facetious fingers, 
and petted till it is thoroughly out of sorts, 
what can be expected of it ? How would 
fathers and mothers endure the martyrdom to 
which they allow the babies to be subjected ? 
Another right which every baby has is to 
its own mother's care and supervision. The 
mother may not be strong enough to hold her 
child and carry it about, to go with it on its 
outings, and to personally attend to all its 
wants. Very often it is really better for both 
mother and child that the strong arms of an 
able-bodied woman should bear it through its 
months of helplessness. Still, no matter how 
apparently worthy of trust a nurse or servant 
may be, unless she have been tried and proved 
by long and faithful service and friendship, a 
babe is too precious to be given unreservedly 
to her care. The mother herself, or an elder 



48 THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 

sister or auntie, should hover protectingly near 
the tiny creature, whose life-long happiness 
may depend on the way its babyhood is 
passed. Who has not seen in the city parks 
the beautifully-dressed infants, darlings evi- 
dently of homes of wealth and refinement, left 
to bear the beams of the sun and stings of 
gnats and flies, while the nurses gossipped to- 
gether, oblivious of the flight of time ? Mo- 
thers are often quick to resent stories of the 
neglect or cruelty of their employees, and can- 
not be made to believe that their own children 
are sufferers. And the children are too young 
to speak. 

The lover of little ones can almost always 
see the subtle difference which exists between 
the babies whom mothers care for, and the 
babies who are left to hirelings. The former 
have a sweeter, shyer, gladder look than the 
latter. Perhaps the babies who are born, so 
to speak, with silver spoons in their mouths, 
are better off than those who came to the 
heritage of a gold spoon. The gold-spoon- 
ers have lovely cradles and vassinets. They 
wear Valenciennes lace and embroidery, and 
fashion dictates the cut of their bibs, and the 



THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 49 

length of their flowing robes. They are 
waited upon by bonnes in picturesque aprons 
and caps, and the doctor is sent for whenever 
they have the colic. The little silver-spoon- 
ers, on the other hand, are arrayed in simple 
slips, which the mother made herself in dear, 
delicious hours, the sweetest in their mystic 
joy which happy womanhood knows. They 
lie on the sofa, or on two chairs with a pillow 
placed carefully to hold them, while she sings 
at her work, spreads the snowy linen on the 
grass, moulds the bread, and shells the peas. 
The mothers hands wash and dress them, the 
father rocks them to sleep, the proud brothers 
and sisters carry them to walk, or wheel their 
little wagons along the pavement Fortunate 
babies of the silver spoon ! 

Alas and alack ! for the babies who have 
never a spoon at all, not even a horn or a 
leaden one. Their poor parents love them, 
amid the squalid circumstances which hem 
them in, but they can do little for their well- 
being, and they die by hundreds in garrets 
and cellars and close tenement rooms. When 
the rich and charitable shall devise some way 
to care for the babies of the poor, we shall 
4 



5o THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 

have taken a long step forward in the direction 
of social and moral elevation. 

Children also have a right to ask questions 
and to be fairly answered ; not to be snubbed 
as if they were guilty of an impertinence, nor 
ignored as though their desire for information 
were of no consequence, nor misled as if it 
did not signify whether true or false impres- 
sions were made upon their minds. 

The child has a right to his individuality, to 
be himself and no other ; to maintain against 
the world the divine fact for which he stands. 
And before this fact father, mother, instructor 
should stand reverently ; seeking rather to 
understand and interpret its significance than 
to wrest it from its original purpose. It is 
not necessarily to be inscribed with the family 
name, nor written over with family traditions. 
Nature delights in surprise and will not guar- 
antee that the children of her poets shall sing, 
nor that every Quaker baby shall take kindly 
to drab color, or have an inherent longing for 
a scoop-bonnet or a broad-brimmed hat 

In the very naming of a child his individu- 
ality should be recognized. He should not be 
invested with the cast-off cognomen of some 



THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 5 1 

dead ancestor or historical celebrity, a name 
musty as the grave-clothes of the original 
wearer — dolefully redolent of old associations 
— a ghostly index-finger forever pointing to 
the past. Let it be something fresh ; a new 
name standing for a new fact, the suggestion 
of a history yet to be written, a prophecy to 
be fulfilled. The ass was well enough clothed 
in his own russet ; but when he would put on 
the skin of the lion, every attribute became 
contemptible. Commonplace people slip easily 
through the world ; but when we would find 
them heralded by great names, we resent the 
incongruity, and insist upon making them less 
than they are. George Washington selling 
peanuts, Julius Caesar as a bootblack, and 
Virgil a vender of old clothes, make but a 
sorry figure. 

We are indebted to our children for con- 
stant incentives to noble living ; for the per- 
petual reminder that we do not live to our- 
selves alone ; for their sakes we are admonish- 
ed to put from us the debasing appetite, the 
unworthy impulse ; to gather into our lives 
every noble and heroic quality, every tender 
and attractive grace. 



52 THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 

We owe them gratitude for the dark hours 
which their presence has brightened, for the 
helplessness and dependence which have won 
us from ourselves ; for the faith and trust 
which it is evermore their mission to renew ; 
for their kisses on cheeks wet with tears, and 
on brows that but for that caressing had fur- 
rowed into frowns. 

Can torture chamber be more dreadful than 
the juvenile party, the necessary parade of 
the Christmas-dinner, to a shy boy ? I have 
sometimes taken the hand of such a one, and 
have found it cold and clammy ; desperate 
was the struggle of that young soul, afraid of 
he knew not what, caught by the machinery 
of society, which mangled him at every point, 
crushed every nerve, and filled him with faint- 
ness and fear. How happy he might have 
been with that brood of young puppies in the 
barn, or the soft rabbits in their nest of hay! 
How grand he was, paddling his poor leaky 
boat down the rapids, jumping into the river, 
and dragging it with his splendid strength 
over the rocks ! Nature and he were friends ; 
he was not afraid of her ; she recognized her 
child and greeted him with smiles. The 
young animals loved him, and his dog looked 



THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 53 

up into his fair blue eyes, and recognized his 
king. But this creature must be tamed ; he 
must be brought into prim parlors, and dine 
with propriety ; he must dress himself in gar- 
ments which scratch, and pull, and hurt him ; 
boots must be put on his feet which pinch ; 
he must be clean, — terrible injustice to a faun 
who loves to roll down-hill, to grub for roots, 
to follow young squirrels to their lair, and to 
polish old guns rather than his manner. 

And then the sensitive boy, who has a finer 
grain than the majority of his fellows, sudden- 
ly thrown into the pandemonium of a public 
school ! Nails driven into the flesh could not 
inflict such pain as such a one suffers ; and 
the scars remain. One gentleman told me, in 
mature life, that the loss of a toy stolen from 
him in childhood still rankled. How much of 
the infirmity of human character may be 
traced to the anger, the sense of wounded 
feeling, engendered by a wrong done in child- 
hood when one is helpless to avenge ! 

All this may be called the necessary hard- 
ening process, but I do not believe in it. We 
have learned how to temper iron and steel, 
but we have not learned how to treat chil- 
dren. Could it be made a money-making pro- 



54 THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 

cess, like the Bessemer, I believe one could 
learn how to temper the human character. 
Our instincts of intense love for our children 
are not enough ; we should study it as a 
science. The human race is very busy ; it 
has to take care of itself, and to feed its 
young; it must conquer the earth — perhaps 
it has not time to study Jim and Jack and 
Charley, and Mary and Emily and Jane, as 
problems. But, if it had, would it not per- 
haps pay ? There would be fewer criminals. 

Many observers recommend a wise neglect 
— not too much inquiry, but a judicious sur- 
rounding of the best influences, and then let 
your young plant grow up. Yes ; but it 
should be a very wise neglect — it should be a 
neglect which is always on the watch lest 
some insidious parasite, some unnoticed but 
strong bias of character, take possession of the 
child and mould or ruin him. Of the ten boys 
running up yonder hill, five will be failures, 
two will be moderate successes, two will do 
better, one will be great, good, and distin- 
guished. If such are the terrible statistics — 
and I am told that they are so — who is to 
blame ? Certainly the parent or guardian, or 
circumstances — and what is circumstance? 




VI. 

BOYS. 

'HE boy is an offense in himself. He 
must have something to do, and as his 
hands are idle the proverbial provider 
of occupation for idle hands is always ready 
with instructions for him. A boy makes noise 
in utter defiance of the laws of acoustics. Shoe 
him in velvet, and carpet your house as you 
will, your boy shall make such a hubbub with 
his heels as no watchman's rattle ever gave 
forth. Doors in his hands always shut with a 
violence which jars the whole house, and he 
is certain to acquire each day the art of scream- 
ing or whistling in some wholly new and excru- 
ciating way. Loving his mother so violently 
that his caresses derange her attire and 
seriously endanger her bones, ready to die in 
her defense if need be, he nevertheless tor- 
ments her from morning to night, and allows 

55 



56 BOYS. 

her no possible peace until slumber closes his 
throat and eyelids, and deprives his hands 
and feet of their demoniac cunning. 

In public your boy is equally a nuisance. 
Collectively or individually he offends the 
public in the streets. Whatever he does is 
sure to be wrong. He monopolizes space and 
takes to himself all the air there is for acous- 
tical purposes. Your personal peculiarities 
interest him, and with all the frankness of his 
soul he comments upon your appearance, 
addressing his remarks to his fellow on the 
next block. 

Nevertheless the boy has his uses. He is 
the material out of which men are to be made 
for the next generation. He is not a bad fel- 
low, — that is to say, he is not intentionally or 
consciously bad. There are springs in his 
limbs which keep him in perpetual motion, 
and the devil of uproar of which he is pos- 
sessed utters the ear-piercing sounds which 
annoy his elders, but the utterances of which 
he can no more restrain than he can keep his 
boots or trousers from wearing out. In a ten- 
acre lot, well away from the house, the boy is 
a picturesque and agreeable person ; it is only 



BOYS. 57 

when one must come into closer contact with 
him that his presence causes suffering and 
suggests a statue to King Herod. It is in 
cities that the boy makes himself felt most dis- 
agreeably, and we fancy the fault is not alto- 
gether his. .As the steam which bursts boilers 
would be a perfectly harmless vapor but for 
the sharp restraint that is put upon it, so the 
effervescent boy becomes dangerous to social 
order only when he is confined, when an 
effort is made to compress him into smaller 
space than the law of his expansive being 
absolutely requires. We send him upon the 
war-path by encroaching upon his hunting- 
grounds ; we drive him into hostility by treat- 
ing him as a public enemy. In most of our 
dealings with him in cities, our effort is to sup- 
press him, and it is an unwise system. If his 
ball-playing in the streets becomes an annoy- 
ance, we simply forbid ball-playing in the 
streets, and it is an inevitable consequence 
that, deprived of his ball, he will throw stones 
at street lamps or at policemen, what else is 
he to do ? 

The beau ideal of boyhood is somewhere 
between eight and twelve— though it exists 



58 BOYS. 

before and after that age — but when within 
those years, it is invested with its greatest 
charm. Then is the first spring of intelligence, 
when all that meets the eye and the ear 
creates its due wonder. Then the feelings 
are tender, and there is yet just so much 
sweet natural helplessness as serves to keep 
ever warm and active our affection, by demand 
upon our care, and to engender a reliance 
upon us, the source of mutual delight. 

Boys are gregarious creatures, and when in 
troops, having confidence in themselves and 
in each other, they are all noise and sport. 

" Turning to mirth all things of earth, 
As only boyhood can." 

But when quite alone, even in their most 
delightful idleness, sauntering and loitering, 
by green lanes, or village highways, they 
show no signs of mirth. Watch them unseen, 
and you will find the lips apart, the eye in- 
quiring ; there is then a look that might be 
mistaken for pensive, but it is not that, nor is 
it easy to define ; it is, however, singularly ex- 
pressive of happiness, the result of sensibility 
and intuitive perception. 

What shall we do with boys ? What shall 



BOYS. 59 

parents do who live in towns and cities ? 
What shall professional men do whose children 
cannot participate in their parent's work ? 
Instead of keeping them anxiously within 
doors, thrust them out as much as possible. 
Do not let watching become spying. Let them 
have sports and companions, and unwatched 
liberty. Put them upon their honor. Boys 
will early respond to this. 

The resources of childhood are nearly inex- 
haustible. Nobody else on this planet is so 
ingenious in inventing fun as a rollicking boy. 
His resources in this respect are as original as 
inexhaustible. In coming down street the 
other day we had an illustration. A boy of 
ten years was walking before us with legs 
that would comport with the body of Daniel 
Lambert. We looked at him in amazement. 
" Son, what is the matter with your legs ? " 
" Nothing. My legs are bunkum. Just see 
'em walk." And he waddled off like a duck. 
" What distends your breeches so ? " " Sand, 
sir," said he, with a hearty laugh. True 
enough, the boy had tied his pants with strings 
at the bottom, as is done in deep snow, and 
filled them to the waist with sand. We walked 



60 BOYS. 

away ruminating upon the vast resources of 
boyhood to inaugurate a little fun. Happy 
boyhood ! It's a pity that adult life cannot 
command as much philosophy. 

A boy not fond of fun and frolic may possi- 
bly make a tolerable man, but he is an intol- 
erable boy. 

A boy may be spoiled about as easily as a 
girl, by injudicious training ; no, we will take 
that back — much easier. In the first place, 
then, by leading him to depend upon his 
sisters. Who has not seen the spoiled boy in 
the man who could not tie his dickey without 
calling his wife from the breakfast table to 
help him ; or put on his coat without she held 
the sleeves ; or get a drop of hot water when 
the kettle was right before him ? Another 
way to spoil a boy is to pick up after him. 
Now that's a thing we wouldn't do (begging 
pardon of the gentleman) for the President. 
We hold that there is as much need of neat 
habits in a boy, as in the gentler sex ; and 
this idea of gathering the coat from the sofa, 
the vest from the rocking-chair, the boots 
from the hearth-rug, the collar from under the 
table, and the neck-cloth from nobody knows 



BOYS. 6l 

wher.e — is perfectly and superlatively ridicu- 
lous. Again, why is the boy allowed to use 
coarse, indelicate expressions, that, from the 
lips of a girl would call forth well-merited 
rebuke? Should the mind of the man be 
made of coarse material because he is expected 
to jostle his way through the rude elements of 
human nature? That is not the law of the 
machinist who controls dumb matter. Though 
one engine may be ponderous and massive, 
destined for the roughest work, and another 
delicate and complicated, there is the same 
smoothness of material in both — the same 
polish, the same nice finish. A boy will most 
surely be spoiled if led to think he can commit 
offences against morals, which by the parents 
are considered only masculine — not criminal. 
Another wrong thing is to bring a boy up for 
a profession, will he, nill he. Some parents 
have a respectable horror for dirt, and cannot 
think of soiled hands and a trade with any 
degree of complacency. Therefore the world 
is burdened with burdens to themselves, in the 
shape of lawyers, doctors, etc., who are too 
poor to live, and too poor to die — in comfort. 
Finally, the surest way to spoil a boy is not 



62 BOYS. 

to instil into his very soul, from the time he 
is an infant, a true reverence for woman; a 
regard for her virtue as sacred as the love he 
bears his mother. Never let her name be 
trifled with in his presence, or her actions in- 
terpreted loosely, else you may hereafter share 
the disgrace of having given to the world a 
curse more corrupting than that of all others 
— a heartless libertine. 

My son, are you a sweetener of life ? You 
may disappoint the ambition of your parents, 
may be unable to distinguish yourself as they 
fondly hoped, may find your intellectual 
strength inadequate to your own desires, but 
let none of these things move you from a de- 
termination to be a son of whose moral char- 
acter they need never be ashamed. Begin 
early to cultivate a habit of thoughtfulness 
and consideration for others, especially for 
those whom you are commanded to honor. 
Can you begrudge a few extra steps for the 
mother who never stopped to number those 
you demanded during your helpless infancy ? 
Have you the heart to slight her requests, or 
treat her remarks with indifference, when you 
cannot begin to measure the patient devotion 



BOYS. 63 

with which she bore with your peculiarities ? 
Anticipate her wants, invite her confidence, 
be prompt to offer assistance, express your 
affections as heartily as you did when a child, 
that the mother may never grieve in secret 
for the son she has lost. 

You are made to be kind, boys, generous, 
magnanimous. If there is a boy in school who 
has a club foot, don't let him know you ever 
saw it. If there is a poor boy with ragged 
clothes, don't talk about rags in his hearing. 
If there is a lame boy, assign him some part 
of the game which does not require running. 
If there is a hungry one, give him part of your 
dinner. If there is a dull one, help him to 
get his lesson. If there is a bright one, be 
not envious of him ; for if one boy is proud 
of his talents, and another is envious of them, 
there are two great wrongs, and no more tal- 
ent than before. If a larger or stronger boy 
has injured you, and is sorry for it, forgive 
him. All the school will show by their coun- 
tenances how much better it is than to have a 
great fist. 

We love to see boys happy. We well re- 
member our school days — how the joyful 



64 BOYS. 

scenes of those golden hours rise before us as 
we write ! After a long, a labored session of 
school, what is finer for boys than a good frolic 
on the green grass ? See them ! — they hop 
and run, and toss their hats and balls ; every 
bone and cord and muscle of their young and 
active frames is brought into full and vigorous 
play. Their minds are unpent as well as their 
bodies. Let boys have exercise. They must 
have it, and a good deal too ; and they must 
have the right kind, or they will become sickly 
and dwarfish, their minds feeble, and their 
feelings peevish and fretful. The open air, 
and the more free and pure the better, is im- 
portant to good exercise to any one, but espe- 
cially the boys. Otherwise they will be pale 
and weak, as a plant doomed to the shade. 
They must have exercise which makes them 
forget themselves, and all their troubles and 
tasks, and throws the mind and heart into a 
glow of life and joy. 

Boyhood needs its discipline of care as well 
as manhood. Young shoulders, however, 
should not carry the load of old, and grow 
prematurely bowed. Give the boys something 
that suits their time of life, though it seem 



BOYS. 65 

boy's play by their elders. They are just re- 
leased from the confinement of the winter 
school and need a pleasant change. The ex- 
citement of sugar-making comes just in time, 
and let the boys have a chance. What gala 
days these are for them among the maples ! 
How the young blood leaps in their veins and 
flushes their cheeks while the sap is mounting 
and running and exhaling its maple odors ! 
Now, too, the calves and lambs and pigs are 
coming into the world, and how naturally the 
boys take to them. The barn just now is a 
good school for first lessons in stock-raising 
and kindness to animals, and the boys here 
are their own best teachers. Then they can 
be fitting up the dove cotes and martin boxes 
and chicken coops, making nests satisfactory 
for the setting hens, and getting things ready 
generally for the new-comers. Boys need 
only to have the yoke fitted to their years, and 
they will hardly feel easy without it. 

Most boys go through a period when they 
have great need of patient love at home. 
They are awkward and clumsy, sometimes 
strangely willful and perverse, and they are 
desperately conscious of themselves, and very 
5 



66 BOYS. 

sensitive to the least word of censure or effort 
at restraint. Authority frets them. They are 
leaving childhood, but they have not yet 
reached the sober good sense of manhood. 
They are an easy prey to the tempter and the 
sophist. Perhaps they adopt skeptical views, 
from sheer desire to prove that they are inde- 
pendent, and can do their own thinking. Now 
is the mother's hour. Her boy needs her now 
more than when he lay in his cradle. Her 
finer insight and serener faith may hold him 
fast, and prevent his drifting into dangerous 
courses. At all events, there is very much 
that only a mother can do for her son. and 
that a son can receive only from his mother, 
in the critical period of which we are thinking. 
It is well for him, if she have kept the fresh- 
ness and brightness of her youth, so that she 
can now be his companion and friend as well 
as instructor. 





VII. 
GIRLS. 

IRLS, and especially those who are 
members of large families, have much 
influence at home, where brothers 
delight in their sisters, and where parents 
look fondly down on their dear daughters, 
and pray that their example may influence 
the boys for good. Girls have much in their 
power with regard to those boys ; they have 
it in their power to make them gentler, purer, 
truer, to give them higher opinions of women ; 
to soften their manners and ways ; to tone 
down rough places, and shape sharp, angular 
corners. 

All this, to be done well, must be done by 
imperceptibly influencing them, and giving 
them an example of the gentleness, the purity, 
the politeness and tenderness we wish them to 
emulate. When we see boys careless to their 

6 7 



6S GIRLS. 

elders, rude in manner and coarse in speech, 
and we know that they have sisters, we often, 
and I think with reason, conclude that there 
must be .something wrong, and that the sisters 
are not trying to make them better boys, but 
leaving things alone, letting them go their 
own course. Perhaps their excuse would be 
that they were too much occupied themselves, 
and that their own studies and pursuits pre- 
vent them from being able to pay much atten- 
tion to their brothers ; and " boys will be 
boys," you know. By all means let boys be 
boys. I, for one, regard boys far too highly 
to wish them to be otherwise ; but the rough- 
ness, and coarseness, and rudeness, of which I 
speak, are not necessary ingredients of boy- 
hood ; and it is you, their sisters, who must 
prove that they are not. Interest yourselves 
in their pursuits, show them, by every means 
in your power, that you do not consider them 
and their doings beneath your notice ; spare 
an hour from your practicing, from your draw- 
ing, from your languages, for their boating or 
sports, and don't turn contemptuously away 
from the books and amusements in which they 
delight, as if, though good enough for them, 





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GIRLS. 69 

they are immeasurably below you. Try this 
behavior, girls, for a short time ; it will not 
harm you, and will benefit them greatly. You 
will soon find how a gentle word will turn off 
a sharp answer ; how a grieved look will effect- 
ually reprove an unfitting expression ; how 
gratefully a small kindness will be received ; 
and how unbounded will be the power for 
good you will obtain by a continuance of this 
conduct. 

Equally great will a girl's influence be on 
her younger sisters, in whose eyes she is the 
perfection of grace and goodness, in whose 
thoughts she is ever present. Beautiful, ex- 
ceedingly beautiful, is the close friendship 
between an elder and a younger sister; but 
let the elder beware of the influence she ex- 
erts. If she herself be careless, frivolous, 
undutiful, and irreligious, the child will inev- 
itably be so, unless the fatal influence be coun- 
teracted by some other holier one. If she 
gives sharp answers, or shows but little regard 
for truth, let her not be astonished if the little 
one be ill-tempered and untruthful ; and sor- 
rowful will be the conviction that she has had 
not a little to do with making her so. 



70 GIRLS. 

In school, too, a girl of determined, resolute 
character will soon take the lead and acquire 
a certain influence. School-girls are gre- 
garious, and follow naturally any one who is 
stronger-minded and more decided. When 
the influence is exercised to elevate the young 
minds, and give them higher and noble aspi- 
rations, it is a salutary and beneficial effect of 
school life ; but when it is otherwise, it is a 
very sad one. Two or three older girls in a 
school, having a noble object in view, steadily 
endeavoring to do right, acting quietly and 
without ostentation, but seeking humbly to 
follow in the footsteps Christ has marked out 
for us, may do an immense amount of good. 
" A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." 

We know not half the power, for good or ill, 
Our daily lives possess o'er one another ; 

A careless word may help a soul to kill, 

Or by one look we may redeem our brother. 

'Tis not the great things that we do or say, 
But idle words forgot as soon as spoken ; 

And little, thoughtless deeds of every day 

Are stumbling blocks on which the weak are broken. 



VIII. 



YOUNG MEN. 

i-tilT is, without doubt, a very joyous 

^ thought to you, that you have become 

a young man. Manhood has long been 

the fairy land of your boyhood's reveries. 

Your full heart swells as you exclaim : 

" Time on my brow hath set his seal ; 
I start to find myself a man." 

Your spirits flow in rich currents of feeling, 
and your lively imagination paints the most 
inviting pictures of the future. To you, life is 
as the lovely vale of Arno, with its enchanting 
scenery of groves and gardens, grottoes, palaces 
and towers ; its transparent lakes, delicious air, 
and sunny skies. 

That you have reached the period of youth 
is, therefore, for you, a very serious fact, 
" Great destinies lie shrouded " in your swiftly 
passing hours. Great responsibilities stand in 

7i 



72 YOUNG MEN. 

the passages of every-day life. Great dangers 
lie hidden in the by-paths of life's great high- 
way ; and syrens, whose song is as charming 
as the voice of Calypso, are there to allure you 
to destruction. Great uncertainty hangs over 
your future history. God has given you ex- 
istence, with full power and opportunity to 
improve it, and be happy. He has given 
you equal power to despise the gift, and be 
wretched. Which will you do, is the grand 
problem to be solved by your choice and con- 
duct. 

As a boy, at home, you have sailed upon 
the calm waters of a quiet river, in a bark, 
carefully furnished by a mother's love, and 
safely guided by a father's skill. Now you 
are sailing through the winding channels, the 
rocky straits, the rapid, rushing currents, at 
the river's mouth, into the great sea of active 
life. And here, for the first time, you are in 
command of the vessel. On your skill and 
caution depends the safety of the passage. 
Neglect the rules laid down on the chart of 
experience by previous navigators, take pas- 
sion for a pilot, place folly at the helm, and 
your bark will shortly lie a pitiful wreck on 



YOUNG MEN. y^ 

the rocks, or be so damaged as to peril your 
safety on the coming voyage. But study well 
the intricacies and dangers of your course,, 
take counsel of experience, let caution be your 
pilot, and, without doubt, you will escape 
rock, current, eddy, and whirlpool, and, with 
streamered masts and big white sail, float 
gayly forth to dare and conquer the perils of 
the sea beyond. 

The young man, as he passes through life, 
advances through a long line of tempters 
ranged on either side of him ; and the inevi- 
table effect of yielding is degradation in a 
greater or less degree. Contact with them 
tends insensibly to draw away from him some 
portion of the divine electric element with 
which his nature is charged ; and his only 
mode of resisting them is to utter and to act 
out his "No" manfully and resolutely. He 
must decide at once, not waiting to deliberate 
and balance reasons ; for the youth, like " the 
woman who deliberates, is lost." Many de- 
liberate, without deciding; but " not to re- 
solve, is to resolve." A perfect knowledge of 
man is in the prayer, " Lead us not into 
temptation." But temptation will come to 



74 YOUNG MEN. 

try the young man's strength ; and once 
yielded to, the power to resist grows weaker 
and weaker. Yield once, and a portion of 
virtue has gone. Resist manfully, and the 
first decision will give strength for life ; re- 
peated, it will become a habit. 

Up, then, with a heroic spirit, and gird 
yourself for mortal conflict with the great 
Apollyon who bestrides your pathway ! If 
he has subdued thousands, thousands have 
also subdued him. And you, too, may be his 
conqueror ! Look courageously at the chart 
of your intended voyage ! If, by every sunken 
rock, and beneath every dashing wave, there 
lies the wreck of youth who perished untimely, 
there is also a haven, beyond the sea, into 
which " a thousand times ten thousand and 
thoitsands of thousands " have triumphantly 
entered, in defiance of stormy winds and roar- 
ing waves. You may do the same, if you 
will take timely heed to your ways. Success 
is before you, if you resolutely and wisely 
seek it. As says a modern writer, " The seas 
of human life are wide. Wisdom may sug- 
gest the voyage, but it must first look to the 
condition of the ship, and the nature of the 



YOUNG MEN. 



75 



merchandise to exchange. Not every vessel 
that sails from Tarshish will bring back the 
gold of Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in 
the harbor ? No ! Give its sails to the wind ! " 

But to wrestle vigorously and successfully 
with any vicious habit, we must not merely 
be satisfied with contending on the low ground 
of wordly prudence, though that is of use, 
but take stand upon a higher moral elevation. 
Mechanical aids, such as pledges, may be of 
service to some, but the great thing is to set 
up a high standard of thinking and acting, and 
endeavor to strengthen and purify the princi- 
ples, as well as to reform the habits. For 
this purpose a youth must study himself, 
watch his steps, and compare his thoughts 
and acts with his rule. The more knowledge 
of himself he gains, the humbler will he be, 
and perhaps the less confident in his own 
strength. But the discipline will be found 
most valuable which is acquired by resisting 
small present gratifications to secure a pro- 
spective greater and higher one. It is the 
noblest work in self-education. 

To be successful in life, to rise above the 
common herd of mankind, a young man re- 



7 6 YOUNG MEN. 

quires certain elements of character. He 
must possess Integrity, that he may win pub- 
lic confidence ; Intelligence, that he may com- 
mand respect ; Industry, that he may collect 
honey from the flowers of trade ; Economy 
and frugality, to preserve his gains ; Energy, 
by which to surmount obstacles ; and Tact, 
to enable him to adapt himself to the openings 
of Providence, and to make him the man for 
the hour of opportunity. These qualifica- 
tions are, to success in life, as foundations of 
jasper to a royal palace. Whoever possesses 
them cannot be an inferior man. To that 
man who retains them, life cannot be a failure. 
Nay, he must rise to social superiority ; he 
must win a commanding influence. 

Every period of life has its peculiar tempta- 
tions and dangers. But were we to specify 
the period which, of all others, is attended 
with the greatest peril, and most needs to be 
watched and guarded, we would fix upon that 
which elapses from fourteen to twenty-one 
years of age. This, preeminently, is the form- 
ing, fixing period ; the spring season of dispo- 
sition and habit ; and it is during this sea- 
son, more than any other, that the character 



YOUNG MEN. jj 

assumes its permanent shape and color, and 
the young man is wont to take his course for 
life and for eternity. 

But not to confine our remarks to this par- 
ticular age, it will not be doubted, that the 
time, during which we usually denominate 
one a young man, is the most important and 
perilous period of his whole existence. Then 
the passions, budding and hastening to ripe- 
ness, acquire new vigor, become impatient of 
restraint, and eager for gratification. Then 
the imagination, unchecked by experience, 
and unrestrained by judgment, paints the 
world in false and fascinating colors, and 
teaches the young bosom to sigh after its vain 
and forbidden pleasures. Then springs up in 
the mind, the restless desire of independence 
and self-control ; — a disposition to throw off 
the restraints of paternal counsel and authori- 
ty, and to think and act for itself. "Then 
the social impulse is felt, and the young man 
looks around for companions and friends ; " 
then the calling for life is chosen, the princi- 
ples of action adopted, habits acquired, and 
those connections in business and society 
formed, which usually decide the character, 



yS YOUNG MEN. 

and fix the condition, both for this and the 
future world. 

" It is a great point for young men to begin 
well ; for it is in the beginning of life that 
that system of conduct is adopted which soon 
assumes the force of habit. Begin well, and 
the habit of doing well will become quite as 
easy as the habit of doing badly. Well begun 
is half ended, says the proverb ; and a good 
beginning is half the battle. Many promising 
young men have irretrievably injured them- 
selves by a first false step at the commence- 
ment of life ; while others of much less prom- 
ising talents, have succeeded simply by begin- 
ning well, and going onward. The good 
practical beginning is, to a certain extent, a 
pledge, a promise, and an assurance, of the 
ultimate prosperous issue. There is many a 
poor creature, now crawling through life, 
miserable himself and the cause of sorrow to 
others, who might have lifted up his head and 
prospered, if, instead of merely satisfying him- 
self with resolutions of well-doing, he had 
actually gone to work and made a good prac- 
tical beginning. 

Too many are, however, impatient of re- 



YOUNG MEN. jg 

suits. They are not satisfied to begin where 
their fathers did, but where they left off. 
They think to enjoy the fruitts of industry 
without working for them. They cannot wait 
for the results of labor and application, but 
forestall them by too early indulgence. A 
worthy Scotch couple, when asked how their 
son had broken down so early in life, gave 
the following explanation : " When we began 
life together, we worked hard, and lived upon 
porridge and such like, gradually adding to 
our comforts as our means improved, until we 
were able at length to dine off a bit of roast 
meat, and sometimes a boilt chuckie (or fowl) ; 
but as for Jock, our son, he began where we 
had left off — he began wi the chuckie first." 
The same illustration will apply to higher con- 
ditions of life than that of this humble pair. 

Middle class people are too apt to live up 
to their incomes, if not beyond them ; affect- 
ing a degree of " style " which is most unhealthy 
in its effect upon society at large. There is 
an ambition to bring up boys as gentlemen, 
or rather " genteel " men ; though the result 
frequently is, only to make them gents. They 
acquire a taste for dress, style, luxuries, and 



80 YOUNG MEN. 

amusements, which can never form any solid 
foundation for manly or gentlemanly charac- 
ter ; and the result is, that we have a vast 
number of gingerbread young gentry thrown 
upon the world, who remind one of the 
abandoned hulls sometimes picked up at sea, 
with only a monkey on board. 

There is a dreadful ambition abroad for 
being "genteel." We keep up appearances, 
too often at the expense of honesty ; and, 
though we may not be rich, yet we must seem 
to be so. We must be " respectable," though 
only in the meanest sense — in mere vulgar 
outward show. We have not the courage to 
go patiently onward in the condition of life in 
which it has pleased God to call us ; but must 
needs live in some fashionable state to which 
we ridiculously please to call ourselves, and 
all to gratify the vanity of that unsubstantial 
genteel world of which we form a part. There 
is a constant struggle and pressure for front 
seats in the social amphitheatre ; in the midst 
of which all noble self-denying resolve is 
trodden down, and many fine natures are in- 
evitably crushed to death. What waste, what 
misery, what bankruptcy, come from all this 



YOUNG MEN. 8 1 

ambition to dazzle others with the glare of 
apparent worldly success, we need not de- 
scribe. The mischievous results show them- 
selves in a thousand ways — in the rank frauds 
committed by men who dare to be dishonest, 
but do not dare to seem poor ; and in the 
desperate dashes at fortune, in which the 
pity is not so much for those who fail, as for 
the hundreds of innocent families who are so 
often involved in their ruin. 

To be above the necessity of labor, — to 
spend life in doing nothing, — is the fancied 
paradise of many youthful minds. Yielding 
to these illusive dreams, they cultivate a 
hatred for labor ; they view the necessity 
which binds them to the countine-room or the 
workshop as the galley-slave regards his 
chain. They envy every gay son of pleasure 
whose empty laugh is heard ringing through 
the street. Hence their labor is irksome — 
their temper sour and repulsive. Their man- 
ners become insulting and vexatious to their 
employers ; their incessant complainings an- 
noy their parents, and misery spreads through- 
out the entire circle of their influence. Thou- 
sands of parental hearts are aching at this 
6 



82 YOUNG MEN 

moment, and thousands of employers are un- 
happy with their apprentices, solely from this 
foolish, guilty aspiration after nothing to do 
which haunts the imaginations of so many 
young men. 

Great men have ever been men of thought, 
as well as men of action. As the magnificent 
river, rolling in the pride of its mighty waters, 
owes its greatness to the hidden springs of 
the mountain nook, so does the wide-sweeping 
influence of distinguished men date its origin 
from hours of privacy, resolutely employed in 
efforts after self- development. The invisible 
spring of self-culture is the source of every 
great achievement. 

Away, then, young man, with all dreams 
of superiority unless you are determined to 
dig after knowledge, as men search for con- 
cealed gold ! If you lack the resolution, the 
manly strength of purpose, needed to bind 
you to reading, reflection, and study, you may 
bid adieu to all hope of marked success. 
Your destiny is settled. You will dwell in 
ignoble nothingness, far down the vale of ob- 
scurity. 

" An old man stood, on the night of a new 



YOUNG MEN. 83 

year, at his window, and gazed with the look 
of despair to the immovable, ever glowing 
heavens, and down to the calm, white earth, 
upon which there was no one so friendless and 
sleepless as he. For his grave lay near him ; 
— it was covered only with the snow of old 
age, not with the green of youth, and he 
brought with him out of the rich abundance 
of his whole life nothing but errors, sins, and 
infirmities, a wasted body, a desolate soul, and 
an old age full of sorrow. To-day his beauti- 
ful youth days wandered about him like 
ghosts, and drew him back to that pleasant 
morning when his father first placed him on 
the cross-way of life which leads, on the right, 
by the sunny path of virtue in a broad peace- 
ful land, full of light and harvests, and on the 
left, drags down in the mole track of vice into 
a black cavern full of dripping poison, hissing 
serpents, and dark, sultry vapors. As the 
serpents hung about his breast, and drops of 
poison upon his tongue, in unutterable grief 
and despair, he cried out to the heavens, — 
Give youth again ! O Father, place me on that 
cross- way again, that I may choose another 
path. But his father and his youth were 



84 YOUNG MEN. 

gone long ago. He saw wandering lights 
dancing among the marshes, and disappearing 
in the graveyard, and he said, These are my 
foolish and wasted days. He saw a star fall 
from heaven, and glimmer in its fall and van- 
ish on the earth ; I am that star, said the 
bleeding heart, and the serpent fangs of re- 
morse struck deeper in his soul. His burning 
imagination pictured before him flying night- 
phantoms ; and a skull, still lying in the 
tomb, by degrees assumed his look. In the 
midst of this struggle within him, the music 
for the new year flowed suddenly down from 
the church tower, like a far-off chant. His 
heart softened. He cast his eyes around the 
horizon and over the broad earth, and he 
thought of the friends of his youth, who now, 
happier than he, were bright examples of 
virtue and worth, fathers of happy children, 
and loved and honored by all around them, 
and he said, Oh, I might also like you have 
slept through this night with unwept eyes, if 
I had been willing. Ah, I might be happy, 
my dear parents, if I had followed your pre- 
cepts. In this feverish remembrance of his 
youthful time, it seemed to him as if the skull, 



YOUNG MEN. 85 

with the features of the tomb, raised itself up 
and became a living youth. He covered his 
eyes. A thousand scalding tears streamed 
down and disappeared in the snow. Hopeless 
in despair he yet only sighed in a low voice, 
— Come back again, O youth, come back. 
And it came back; for he had only dreamed 
so fearfully. He was still a young man. 
His grief alone had been no dream. But he 
thanked God that, still young, he could turn 
in the midst of the dark currents of life and 
reach the land of harvests. Turn back with 
him, young man, if you stand in his wander- 
ing way. This frightful dream will become 
in future your judge. But if ever full of sor- 
row and despair, you should cry out, Come 
again, bright and vigorous youth ; O come ! 
Then it will not come again. It will be gone 
never to return." 




IX. 




YOUNG WOMEN. 

HE most important era in the life of a 
young woman is when she finally 
leaves school. At this time she be- 
gins to think for herself, and is left in more 
than ordinary freedom to act for herself. Up 
to this period, she has lived in obedience to 
parents, guardians, or teachers. She has gone 
to school, and pursued her studies under the 
entire direction of others, submitting her will 
and her judgment to the will and judgment 
of others, as older and wiser than herself. 
Her mind has been fully occupied with the 
various branches of knowledge which it has 
been deemed by others right that she should 
acquire. But now, books of instruction . are 
laid aside ; the strict rules of the seminary are 
no longer observed ; the mind that has been 
for a long time active in the pursuits of knowl- 
edge sinks into repose. 

86 



YOUNG WOMEN. 87 

Her whole future life will be affected by 
whatever is right or wrong in her conduct, 
and mode of thinking and living, at this period. 
The habits of order and study which existed 
while at school were not properly her own, 
for they were merely the result of obedience 
to laws prescribed by others ; but now, acting 
in freedom, whatever she does is from herself, 
and stamps itself permanently upon the im- 
pressible substance of her forming character. 
If, from natural indolence, she sinks into idle- 
ness and self-indulgence, she will be in danger 
of forming a habit that will go with her through 
life ; but if, from a sense of duty to herself 
and others, she still occupies all her time, and 
all the powers of her mind, in doing or ac- 
quiring something, she will gradually gain 
strength and force of character, as her mind 
expands, and take, as a woman, in a few years* 
a woman's true position of active use in her 
appropriate sphere. 

Life is a voyage, and to most of us a rough 
and stormy one. In commencing this voy- 
age, let each one emulate the wisdom, pru- 
dence, and forethought of the sailor. The 
weaker we are, and the less able to endure 



88 YOUNG WOMEN. 

the shock of a tempest, the more careful should 
we be that everything is right before we push 
off from the shore. 

It is clear, then, that, in the beginning of 
life a woman who has less ability to contend in 
the world, and is more exposed to evils and 
hardships, should reverses come, ought to 
furnish herself thoroughly with the means of 
self-sustenance and self-protection. This she 
can only do by acquiring some knowledge or 
skill, the exercise of which will enable her to 
supply not only her own wants, but the wants 
of all who may be dependent upon her. 
There is no time in which this can be done so 
well as in the few years which succeed the 
period of a young lady's final withdrawal from 
school. These years ought to be employed 
by all, no matter how high their station, in 
thoroughly mastering some branch of knowl- 
edge, or in acquiring some skill, from the ex- 
ercise of which, as a regular employment, 
should necessity ever require it to be done, a 
livelihood may be obtained. 

Viewing yourself in your relations to hu- 
man society, you cannot fail to perceive much 
of evil, of danger, and of suffering, before 



YOUNG WOMEN. 89 

you. You everywhere behold women whose 
early career was as gay, as secure, as promis- 
ing, as your own, the victims of heart desola- 
tion, of acute suffering, of neglect, of poverty, 
— to whom life is as a desert waste, where 
suffocating winds sweep rudely past them, 
and stifling sands threaten to bury them in 
death. In one direction, you see a daughter 
thrown upon her own resources by the prema- 
ture death of her parents ; in another, a wife, 
but yesterday a happy bride, left to inde- 
scribable sorrow by the neglect of an unfaith- 
ful husband, or plunged into a mournful wid- 
owhood by the visitation of death. 

Seek, therefore, young lady, for skill in 
household labors ; acquire some means of 
living by your own labor ; cultivate a courage- 
ous spirit ; learn to be decided in your adhesion 
to the voices of duty, — and you will be fitted 
to confront, with a consciousness of strength 
to overcome them, the most trying ordeals of 
life. Resting on these qualities, you will feel 
strong, your heart will be bold, you will not 
sink, with a crushed and broken spirit, under 
the pressure of difficulty, — but, erect and 
mighty, you will be mistress of your circum- 
stances, and victor over your trials. 



9o 



YOUNG WOMEN. 



While, if you despise the wisdom which 
distils from this advice, — if you live in sloth- 
ful, idle self-neglect during the sunny hours 
of youth, and trouble suddenly bursts on your 
defenceless head, — 

" Your mind shall sink, a blighted flower, 
Dead to the sunbeam and the shower ; 
A broken gem, whose inborne light 
Is scattered, ne'er to reunite." 

Loveliness of spirit is woman's sceptre and 
sword, for it is both the emblem and the in- 
strument of her conquests. Her influence 
flows from her sensibilities, her gentleness, her 
tenderness. It is this which disarms preju- 
dice, and awakens confidence and affection in 
all who come within her sphere ; which makes 
her more powerful to accomplish what her 
will resolves than if nature had endowed her 
with the strength of a giant. 

I would not, however, have you to imagine, 
that loveliness of spirit alone is a source of 
high and abiding influence, nor that other 
great qualities may be dispensed with, if this 
one is obtained. So far is this from the 
truth, that this quality is dependent upon the 
existence of the most exalted moral excellen- 



YOUNG WOMEN. 



91 



cies. Nature may have endowed you with 
exquisite sensibility, with a highly refined and 
delicate physical organization, which may give 
you the appearance of being lovely, and en- 
able you to make a favorable impression and 
to exert an irresistible power over the mind 
you aim to fascinate. But if your heart is 
lacking in high-minded self-devotion, in self- 
control, in sincerity, in genuine meekness, 
your loveliness, like a coating of gold upon a 
counterfeit coin, will disappear before all who 
behold you in contact with the realities of 
life. Genuine loveliness is the effulgence of 
sublime virtue ; it is a soft and mellow light, 
diffusing a delicious radiance over the entire 
character, and investing its possessor with a 
halo of indefinable beauty. It is the " fresh 
ripple from deep fountains " of inborne love. 
It is the gentle dew descending from the clear 
heaven of a pure and lofty mind — the mystic 
charm that " pleases all around, from the wish 
to please." 

Let every one see that you care for them 
by showing them what Sterne so happily calls 
" the small sweet courtesies of life," in which 
there is no parade ; whose voice is too still to 



92 YOUNG WOMEN. 

tease, and which manifest themselves by ten- 
der and affectionate looks and little acts of 
attention — giving others the preference in 
every little enjoyment at the table, in the 
field, walking, sitting or standing. This is the 
spirit that gives your sex its sweetest charm. 
It constitutes the sum total of the witchcraft 
of woman. Let the world see that your first 
care is for yourself, and you will spread the 
solitude of the upas-tree around you, in the 
same way, by the emanation of a poison which 
kills all the juices of affection in its neighbor- 
hood. Such a girl may be admired for her 
understanding and accomplishments, but she 
will never be beloved. 

Self-culture implies suitable efforts to 
strengthen and expand the intellect, by read- 
ing, by reflection, and by writing down your 
thoughts. Reading suitable books stores the 
mind with facts and principles ; reflection con- 
verts those facts and principles into a real 
mental aliment, and thus quickens the soul 
into growth ; while writing tends to precision 
of thought and beauty of expression. Every 
young lady should, therefore, read much, re- 
flect more, and write as frequently and care- 
fully as she has opportunity. 



YOUNG WOMEN. 93 

The principal object of reading, with many 
young women, is pleasure. They seek for 
excited sensibilities and a charmed imagina- 
tion. Hence, novels and poetry form the sta- 
ple of their reading. Grave history, graver 
science, and dull philosophy they eschew, 
while they actually abhor the sober pages of 
theology. The novel is well thumbed ; the 
poem, if it is not too Miltonic, is well turned 
down at the corners ; but poor Gibbon, Mos- 
heim, Newton, lie quietly in some snug corner, 
robed in cobwebs, beside the dust-covered and 
despised Bible. What is the consequence ? 
Obscured, feeble intellect, a weakened mem- 
ory, an extravagant and fanciful imagination, 
benumbed sensibilities, a demoralized con- 
science and a corrupted heart ! A troop of 
evils more to be dreaded by a young lady 
than the advance of an invading army — for 
soldiers only kill the body, but these strangle 
the immortal mind. 

Learn to become the good, guardian genius 
of the opposite sex. Breathe hope, vigor, 
encouragement into all hearts that live around 
you. But, to do this, you must be brave 
yourself. You require a strong, trustful, 



94 YOUNG WOMEN. 

courageous spirit in your own breast. You 
need to carefully cultivate it, by subduing fear 
and laboring to rise equal to your present 
emergencies. It is not fear alone, but fear 
unrestrained, that makes a coward ; nor is 
bravery the absence of fear. 

A young lady would shrink appalled at the 
idea of daily puncturing her brother's eye 
with a needle, to the destruction of his sight, 
yet will breathe a spirit of discontent, pride, 
and folly into his mind ; and thus, by disturb- 
ing his happiness at home, drive him to seek 
congenial society abroad, where his morals 
grow depraved, his character is lost, and his 
soul ruined. This fearful result she brings 
about, without a sigh of regret or a pang of 
sorrow. When the evil work is done she 
weeps over the wreck, and would give the 
gold of the world to restore the fallen one. 
Yet for her share in causing this destruction 
she sheds not a tear ; indeed, she is uncon- 
scious that any portion of the blame lies at 
her door. Her influence was silent and in- 
visible when in exercise, and yet it drove her 
brother to ruin. 

Your image will stand before a brother, a 



YOUNG WOMEN. 9 5 

husband or a father, as a good genius in the 
hour of temptation, and forbid the triumph of 
the tempter. For, calling up your character, 
his full heart will exclaim of you : — 

" She looks as whole as some serene 
Creation minted in the golden moods 
Of sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch, 
But pure as lines of green that streak the white 
Of the first snow-drop's inner leaves." 

In order that a young lady may be qualified 
to act well her part in life, she should acquire 
a thorough knowledge of all domestic and 
culinary affairs, so that, even if she should 
never be required by circumstances to go into 
the kitchen to cook a dinner, she will yet be 
able to give directions how to do it, and know 
when it is properly done. No one knows 
what a day may bring forth. Life is a scene 
of perpetual changes. We have known ladies 
who have been raised in entire freedom from 
labor, suddenly reduced to poverty, and com- 
pelled, for a time, to do what might well be 
called household drudgery, or see their hus- 
bands and children subjected to the severest 
privations. And even where no such reverse, 
but only a change from one section of the 



96 YOUNG WOMEN. 

country to another, has taken place, the ne- 
cessity for a practical knowledge of everything 
pertaining to housekeeping is frequently found 
to exist. 

No hand but the hand of a wife should pre- 
pare the food of her husband when he is sick ; 
and no hand but the hand of a mother, the 
food of her child. A remembrance of the 
badly-prepared, tasteless food, which almost 
every woman has had served to her in sick- 
ness, from her own cook, will be felt as a suf- 
ficient reason for this declaration. To cook 
for the sick requires an experienced hand. A 
woman who knows nothing at all about cook- 
ing will fail entirely in the attempt, and if her 
husband be sick, he will be fortunate, indeed, 
if he can take more than a few spoonfuls of 
the tea, or a few morsels of the toast, that is 
brought to his bedside as he begins to con- 
valesce. 

If for no other purpose, a young lady should 
learn the art of cooking in order that she may 
be able to prepare the food of her parent, her 
brother, her sister, or, at some future time, 
the food of her husband, when sick. This 
may seem a little matter. But no one who 



YOUNG WOMEN. g? 

has been sick will think it so. It must not be 
inferred that we would shut every woman up, 
a prisoner in her house, and cause her to de- 
vote every hour of her time to domestic du- 
ties. All we contend for is, that a woman 
should govern in her household, as fully as a 
man governs in his store, office, counting- 
room, manufactory, or workshop, and that in 
order to do this, she should qualify herself be- 
forehand for her particular duties, as he has to 
qualify himself for his. 

A young man, remarkable for his strong 
good sense, married a very accomplished and 
fashionable young lady, attracted more by her 
beauty and accomplishments than by anything 
else. In this, it must be owned that his strong 
good sense did not seem very apparent. His 
wife, however, proved to be a very excellent 
companion, and was deeply attached to him, 
though she still loved company, and spent 
more time abroad than he exactly approved. 
But, as his income was good, and his house 
furnished with a full supply of domestics, he 
was not aware of any abridgments of comfort 
on this account, and he therefore made no ob- 
jection to it. 
7 



98 YOUNG WOMEN. 

One day, some few months after his mar- 
riage, our friend, on coming home to dinner, 
saw no appearance of his usual meal, but found 
his wife in great trouble instead. 

" What's the matter ? " he asked. 

" Maggie went off at ten o'clock this morn- 
ing/' replied his wife, "and the chambermaid 
knows no more about cooking a dinner than 
the man in the moon." 

" Couldn't she have done" it under your di- 
rection ? " inquired the husband, very coolly. 

" Under my direction ? Goodness ! I 
should like to see a dinner cooked under my 
direction." 

" Why so ? " asked the husband in surprise. 
" You certainly do not mean that you cannot 
cook a dinner." 

" I certainly do, then," replied his wife. 
" How should I know anything about cook- 
ing? 

The husband was silent, but his look of as- 
tonishment perplexed and worried his wife. 

" You look very much surprised," she said 
after a moment or two had elapsed. 

" And so I am," he answered, "as much sur- 
prised as I should be at finding the captain on 



YOUNG WOMEN. 99 

one of my ships unacquainted with navigation. 
Don't know how to cook, and the mistress of 
a family ! Belle, if there is a cooking school 
any where in the city, go to it, and complete 
your education, for it is deficient in a very im- 
portant particular." 

The wife was hurt and offended at the 
words and manner of her husband ; but she 
soon got over this. The next time the cook 
went away there was no trouble about the 
dinner. 

Order, is the essential prerequisite of every 
truly efficient action. Without it, nothing can 
be done well ; with it, there is no duty in life 
that may not be rightly performed. Without 
it, the lightest task is burdensome ; with it, 
that which to look at seems almost herculean 
becomes a matter of easy accomplishment. 

Neatness almost invariably accompanies 
order ; indeed, the one is nearly inseparable 
from the other. When we see a neat person, 
we expect to find one who is orderly in all her 
habits, and we are rarely mistaken. Neatness 
in dress should be regarded as much as neat- 
ness in every thing that is done. A want of 
neatness, as well as a want of order, shows a 



IOO YOUNG WOMEN. 

defect in the mind, the correction of which is 
essential to happiness. The only way to correct 
any such defect is to act in opposition to it. 

But let it not be forgotten that the habit of 
order must be formed in early years. When 
life's most serious duties press upon the mind, 
and demand the exercise of all its energies, 
there is no time to think about systems of or- 
der, and little inclination to attempt doing so. 




X. 



BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 




OUNG man, if you have sisters, who 
are just entering society, all your in- 
terest should be awakened for them. 
You cannot but have made the discovery, 
that too few of the young men who move 
about in the various social circles are fit asso- 
ciates for a pure-minded woman. Their ex- 
terior, it is true, is very fair ; their persons 
are elegant, and their manners attractive ; but 
you have met them when they felt none of 
the restraints of female society, and seen them 
unmask their real characters. You have 
heard them speak of this sweet girl, and that 
pure-minded woman, in terms that would have 
roused your deepest indignation, had your own 
sister been the subject of allusion. 

You may know all these things, but your 

IOI 



102 BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 

innocent sisters at home cannot know them, 
nor see reason for shunning the society of 
those whose real characters, if revealed, would 
cause them to turn away in disgust and hor- 
ror. From the dangers of an acquaintance- 
ship with such young men, it is your duty to 
guard your sisters ; and you must do this more 
by warding off the evil than by warnings 
against it. In order to do this, you should 
make it a point of duty always to go with 
your sisters into company, and to be their 
companion, if possible, on all public occasions. 
By so doing, you can prevent the introduc- 
tion of men whose principles are bad ; or, if 
such introductions are forced upon them in 
spite of you, can throw in a timely word of 
caution. This latter it may be too late to do 
after an acquaintanceship is formed with a 
man whose character is detestable in your 
eyes. Your sister will hardly believe that one 
who is attractive in all respects, and who can 
converse of virtue and honor so eloquently, 
can possibly have an impure or vicious mind. 
The great thing is to guard, by every means 
in your power, these innocent ones from the 
polluting presence of a bad man. You can- 



BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 



103 



not tell how soon he may win the affections 
of the most innocent, confiding, and loving of 
them all, and draw her off from virtue. And 
even if his designs be honorable, if he win her 
but to wed her, her lot will be by no means 
an enviable one ; for no pure-minded woman 
ever has been, or ever can be made happy by a 
corrupt, evil-minded, and selfish man. On your 
faithfulness to your duty may depend a life- 
time of happiness or misery for those who are, 
or ought to be, very dear to you. Your af- 
fection for them should lead you to enter into 
their pleasures as far as in your power to do 
so ; to give interest and variety to the home 
circle ; to afford them, at all times, the assist- 
ance of your judgment in matters of trivial as 
well as grave importance. By this, you will 
gain their confidence and acquire an influence 
over them that may, at some later period, en- 
able you to serve them in a moment of im- 
pending danger. 

We very often see young men with sisters, 
who appear to be entirely indifferent in regard 
to them. They rarely visit together; their 
associates are strangers to each other ; they 
appear to have no common interests. This 



104 BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 

state of things is the fault, nine times in ten, 
of the young men. It is the result of their 
neglect and indifference. There are very few 
sisters who do not with a most tender and un- 
selfish regard love their brothers, especially 
their elder brothers, and who would not feel 
happier in being their companions than in the 
companionship of almost any one else. Not- 
withstanding all this neglect and indifference, 
how willingly is every little office performed 
that adds to the brother's comfort ! How 
much care is there for him, who gives back so 
little in return ! 

A regard for himself, as well as for his sis- 
ters, should lead a young man to be much 
with them. Their influence in softening, pol- 
ishing, and refining his character will be very 
great. They have perceptions of the propri- 
ety and fitness of things far quicker than he 
has ; and this he will soon see if he observe 
their remarks upon the persons with whom 
they come in contact, and the circumstances 
that transpire around them. While he is 
reasoning on the subject, and balancing many 
things in his mind before coming to a satis- 
factory conclusion, they, by a kind of intuition, 



BROTHERS AND SISTERS. io5 

have settled the whole matter, and settled it, 
he will find, truly. 

The temptations to which young men are ex- 
posed, when first they come in contact with 
the world, are many, and full of the strongest 
allurements. Their virtuous principles are as- 
sailed in a thousand ways ; sometimes boldly, 
and sometimes by the most insidious arts of 
the vicious and evil-minded. All, therefore, 
that can make virtue lovely in their eyes, and 
vice hideous, they need to strengthen the 
good principles stored up, from childhood, in 
their minds. For their sakes, home should be 
made as attractive as possible, in order to in- 
duce them frequently to spend their evenings 
in the place where, of all others, they will be 
safest. To do this, a young lady must consult 
the tastes of her brothers, and endeavor to 
take sufficient interest in the pursuits that in- 
terest them, so as to make herself companion- 
able. 

There is no surer way for a sister to gain 
an influence with her brother, than to cultivate 
all exterior graces and accomplishments, and 
improve her mind by reading, thinking, and 
observation. By these means she not only 



106 BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 

becomes his intelligent companion, but in- 
spires him with a feeling of generous pride 
towards her, that, more than anything else, 
impresses her image upon his mind, brings her 
at all times nearer to him, and gives her a 
double power over him for good. 

The indifference felt by brothers towards 
their sisters, when it does exist, often arises 
from the fact that their sisters are inferior, in 
almost everything, to the women they are in 
the habit of meeting abroad. Where this is 
the case, such indifference is not so much to 
be wondered at. 

Sisters should always endeavor to gain, as 
much as possible, the confidence of their broth- 
ers, and to give them their confidence in re- 
turn. Mutual good offices will result from this* 
and attachments that could only produce un- 
happiness may be prevented. A man sees 
more of men than a woman does, and the 
same is true in regard to the other sex. This 
being so, a brother has it in his power at once 
to guard his sister against the advances of an 
unprincipled man, or a man whose habits he 
knows to be bad, and a sister has it in her 
power to reveal to her brother traits of char- 



BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 107 

acter in a woman, for whom he is about form- 
ing an attachment, that would repel rather 
than attract him. 

If your brothers are younger than you, 
encourage them to be perfectly confidential 
with you ; win their friendship by your 
sympathy in all their concerns, and let them 
see that their interests and their pleasures are 
liberally provided for in the family arrange- 
ments. Never disclose their little secrets, 
however unimportant they may seem to you ; 
never pain them by an ill-timed joke ; never 
repress their feelings by ridicule, but be their 
tenderest friend, and then you may become 
their ablest adviser. If separated from them 
by the course of school and college education, 
make a point of keeping up your intimacy by 
full, free, and affectionate correspondence ; and 
when they return to the paternal roof, at that 
awkward age between youth and manhood, 
when reserve creeps over the mind like an 
impenetrable veil, suffer it not to interpose 
between you and your brothers. Cultivate 
their friendship and intimacy with all the 
address and tenderness you possess ; for it is 
of unspeakable importance to them that their 



108 BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 

sisters should be their confidential friends. 
Consider the loss of a ball or party, for the 
sake of making the evening pass pleasantly to 
your brothers at home, as a small sacrifice — 
one you should unhesitatingly make. If they 
go into company with you, see that they are 
introduced to the most desirable acquaint- 
ances, and show them that you are interested 
in their acquitting themselves well. 

So many temptations beset young men, of 
which young women know nothing, that it is 
of the utmost importance that your brothers' 
evenings should be happily passed at home ; 
that their friends should be your friends ; that 
their engagements should be the same as 
yours ; and that various innocent amusements 
should be provided for them in the family 
circle. I know no more agreeable and inter- 
esting spectacle than that of brothers and 
sisters playing and singing together those ele- 
vated compositions in music and poetry which 
gratify the taste and purify the heart, while 
their parents sit delighted by. I have seen 
and heard an elder sister thus leading the 
family choir, who was the soul of harmony to 
the whole household, and whose life was a 



BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 109 

perfect example of those virtues which I am 
here endeavoring to inculcate. Let no one 
say, in reading this chapter, that too much is 
here required of sisters ; that no one can be 
expected to lead such a self-sacrificing life. 

I have been told by men, who had passed 
unharmed through the temptations of youth, 
that they owed their escape from many dan- 
gers to the intimate companionship of affec- 
tionate and pure-minded sisters. They have 
been saved from a hazardous meeting with 
idle company by some home engagement, of 
which their sisters were the charm ; they have 
refrained from mixing with the impure, be- 
cause they would not bring home thoughts 
and feelings which they could not share with 
those trusting, and loving friends ; they have 
put aside the wine-cup, and abstained from 
stronger potations, because they would not 
profane with their fumes the holy kiss, with 
which they were accustomed to bid their sis- 
ters good-night. 





XI. 

MAN. 

O be great is to be good, to be good is 
to be wise, and to be wise is to know 
thyself. " Know thyself " is a pre- 
cept which, we are informed, descended from 
Heaven. It is a noble science to know one's 
self; and a noble courage to know how to 
yield. 

The Arabs have a proverb, " The moment 
a man is satisfied with himself, everybody else 
is dissatisfied with him." We have weak 
points both by birth and education, and it 
may be questioned which of the two give us 
the most trouble. If we were as careful to 
polish our manners as our teeth, to make our 
temper sweet as our breath, to cut off our 
faults as to pare our nails, to be upright in 
character as in person, to shave our souls as 
to shave our chin, what an immaculate race 

no 



MAN. 1 1 1 

we should become ! Many a man thinks it is 
a virtue that keeps him from turning rascal, 
when it is only a full stomach. One should 
be careful and not mistake potatoes for prin- 
ciples. If it is difficult to see any fault in a 
child, or a book, or a pudding, or any one we 
love, how much more so that we should see 
any in ourselves ! 

There is nothing that helps a man in his 
conduct through life more than a knowledge 
of his own characteristic weakness, which, 
guarded against, becomes his strength, as there 
is nothing that tends more to the success of a 
man's talents than his knowing the limits of 
his faculties, which are thus concentrated on 
some practical object. One man can do but 
one thing well. Universal pretensions end 
in nothing. It is a deplorable condition, to 
be always doing what we are always con- 
demning. The reproaches of others are pain- 
ful enough. But when the lash is laid on by 
our own hand, the anguish is intolerable. 
How cheering, on the contrary, even in the 
deepest night of calamity, when conscience 
calls out from her watch-tower in the soul — 
All's Well! 



1 1 2 MAN. 

Just and discriminating ideas generally lead 
to proper action, and a willing judgment en- 
forces a strict adherence to the rules of pro- 
priety. Stupid, yes presumptuous must that 
man be who would peril every consideration 
for a good character upon a base act, simply 
because he cannot see at once the true tend- 
ency of a consistent course of life. But it 
can be seen, and like the works of a good 
man, will shine before the world, leaving a 
light behind, and sending its arrowy beams 
into the future, to guide life's wandering steps 
aright. 

Deportment, honesty, caution, and a desire 
to do right carried out in practice, are to hu- 
man character what truth, reverence, and love 
are to religion. They are the unvaried ele- 
ments of a good reputation. Such virtues 
can never be reproached, although the vulgar 
and despicable may scoff at them ; but it is 
not so much in their affected revulsion at 
them, as it is in the wish to reduce them to 
the standard of their own degraded natures, 
and vitiated passions. Let such scoff and 
sneer, — let them laugh and ridicule as much 
as they may, — a strict, upright, onward course 



man: i 1 3 

will evince to the world and to them, that 
there is more manly independence in one for- 
giving smile, than in all the pretended excep- 
tions to worthiness in the society of the mean 
and vulgar. Virtue must have its admirers, 
and firmness of principle, both moral and re- 
ligious, will ever command the proudest en- 
comium of the intelligent world, to the exclu- 
sion of every other thing connected with 
human existence. 

There is no surer destroyer of youth, privi- 
leges, powers and delights, — than yielding 
the spirit to the empire of ill-temper and self- 
ishness. We should all be cautious, as we 
advance in life, of allowing occasional sorrow- 
ful experience to overshadow our preception 
of the preponderance of good. Faith in good 
is at once its own rectitude and reward. To 
believe good, and to do good, truly and trust- 
fully, is the healthiest of humanity's condi- 
tions. To take events cheerfully, and promote 
the happiness of others is the way to ensure 
the enduring spring of existence. Content 
and kindliness are the soft vernal showers and 
fostering sunny warmth that keep a man's 
nature and being fresh and green. 



114 MAN. 

Sociality is to man what modesty is to 
woman ; it is a principle that should be ever 
active, but governed by occasion and consist- 
ency. A lack of this betrays at once a defici- 
ency in true manliness. Not so much depends 
upon a power or faculty as upon its proper 
exercise, and when this is abused, there is a 
great depreciation of its beauties. To the 
young man just entering the most important 
portion of his existence — the formation of a 
worthy name and character — it is well that he 
should first learn that society corrupts as it is 
corrupt — that it forms or moulds principles by 
a gradual or accelerated progress according to 
the degree of its influence. 

Man is to be rated, not by his hoards of 
gold, not by the simple or temporary influence 
he may for a time exert ; but by his unexcep- 
tionable principles relative both to character 
and religion. Strike out these, and what is 
he ? A brute without a virtue — a savage with- 
out a sympathy ! Take them away and his 
manship is gone ; he no longer lives in the 
image of his Maker ! A cloud of sin hangs 
darkly on his brow ; there is ever a tempest 
on his countenance, the lightning in his glance, 



MAN. tl 5 

the thunder in words, and the rain and whirl- 
wind in the breathing of his angry soul. No 
smile gladdens his lip to tell that love is play- 
ing there ; no sympathizing glow illuminates 
his cheek. Every word burns with malice, 
and that voice— the mystic gift of Heaven — 
grates as harshly on the timid ear, as rushing 
thunders beating amid falling cliffs and tum- 
bling cataracts. 

But this is too dark a picture for a long 
continued view. Turn we from it now, as 
from a frightful scene, to the only divine im- 
age that Virtue elevates before the world for 
example and imitation. Let man go abroad 
with just principles, and what is he ? An ex- 
haustless fountain in a vast desert ! A glori- 
ous sun shining ever — dispelling every vestige 
of darkness ! There is love animating his 
heart, sympathy breathing in every tone. 
Tears of pity — dew drops of the soul — gather 
in his eye, and gush impetuously down his 
cheek. Quivering on his lips are words that 
wait for utterance, and thoughts, winged as 
with lightning, play amid his tell-tale glances. 
A good man is abroad and the world knows 
and feels it. Beneath his smile lurks no de- 



Il6 MAN. 

grading passion ; within his heart there 
slumbers no guile. He is not exalted in mor- 
tal pride — not elevated in his own views, but 
honest, moral and virtuous before the world. 
He stands throned on truth, his fortress is 
wisdom and his dominion is the vast and limit- 
less universe. Always upright, kind and 
sympathizing, always attached to just princi- 
ples and actuated by the same, governed by 
the highest motives in doing good — these are 
his only true manliness. 




XII. 




WOMAN. 

OMAN is a very nice and a very com- 
plicated machine. Her springs are 
infinitely delicate, and differ from 
those of a man as the work of a repeating 
watch does from that of a town clock. Look at 
her body — how delicately formed ! Observe 
her understanding, how subtle and acute ! 
But look into her heart — there is the watch- 
work, composed of parts so minute in them- 
selves, and so wonderfully combined, that 
they must be seen by a microscopic eye to be 
clearly comprehended. The perception of 
woman is as quick as lightning. Her pene- 
tration is intuition — I had almost said instinct. 
A woman's whole life is a history of the affec- 
tions. The heart is her world ; it is there her 
ambition strives for empire ; it is there her 

117 



1 1 8 WOMAN. 

avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends 
forth her sympathies on adventure ; she em- 
barks her whole soul in the traffic of affection ; 
and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for 
it is bankruptcy of the heart. 

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, 
will always be the text of the life of woman. 

Woman's influence is the sheet anchor of 
society ; and this influence is due, not exclu- 
sively to the fascination of her charms, but 
chiefly to the strength, uniformity and con- 
sistency of her virtues, maintained under so 
many sacrifices, and with so much fortitude 
and heroism. Without these endowments and 
qualifications, external attractions are noth- 
ing ; but with them, their power is irresistible. 
Beauty and virtue are the crowning attributes 
bestowed by nature upon woman, and the 
bounty of heaven more than compensates for 
the injustice of man. The possession of these 
advantages secures to her universally that 
degree of homage and consideration which 
renders her independent of the effects of un- 
equal and arbitrary laws. But it is not the 
incense of idle worship which is most accept- 
able to the heart of woman ; it is, on the con- 



WOMAN. 119 

trary, the just appreciation of her proper 
position, merits, and character. What man 
expects to acquire by force of energy and the 
exercise of his talents, woman hopes to obtain 
by the power of pleasing, and her ascendency 
over the heart. The means are different, the 
ends in view the same ; namely, prosperity in 
life, and a desirable position in the world. 
There is no period in the life of man, as long 
as his mental and bodily powers remain unim- 
paired, in which he is socially disqualified for 
the race he has to run, and that contest in 
which he is called upon to engage. He may 
remain a long time a silent, but watchful 
spectator of the scene ; or he may be disabled, 
and thrown off his balance ; but he can appear 
again, and by summoning his dormant facul- 
ties to his aid, he may succeed in dividing the 
booty with his compeers, or in securing his 
share of the world's honor and spoils. To 
place a woman in early life in a career like 
this, is to alter her destiny, to endanger her 
respectability, to destroy her sympathies, and 
to subvert the intentions of Nature. If, by 
the influence of her charms, or the opportuni- 
ties of her position, she has failed to procure 



1 20 woman: 

a desirable elevation in society — or if, by a 
cruel destiny, she has been deprived of friends 
and fortune, and is urged to assert her rights, 
and to make her own way through the world 
— if her resolution can save her from despair, 
and her principles of virtue from reproach — 
yet she labors under great disadvantages in 
placing herself upon the same footing with 
men, who are hardened to the world, and 
more accustomed to personal privations and 
toil. But nevertheless, there have been wo- 
men who, impelled by high motives and a 
determined sense of duty, have surmounted 
all these obstacles, and have acquired by their 
own efforts both fortune and influence. Some 
moralist has said that no woman had a right 
to be plain ; which is true. Her nature en- 
titles her to be beautiful only, and when it is 
really operative always renders her so. Never 
yet saw any one beauty in woman which was 
not purely womanly, and therefore, impersonal. 
The person who reveals it, joyously feels her- 
self to be merely the priestess or minister of 
this sacred flame, and shrinks from all per- 
sonal property in it, as from sacrilege. 

The men who flatter women do not know 



WOMAN. 1 2 1 

them sufficiently ; and the men who only 
abuse them do not know them at all. Amer- 
ica is the Paradise of women. They are more 
respected, honored and loved, and more ten- 
derly treated, in this country than in any other 
on earth. In other lands, women, in many 
instances, and in some constantly, toil in the 
fields like beasts of burden, while their fathers, 
and husbands, and brothers, and sons sit smok- 
ing and drinking at home, or in the public 
bar-room, thus squandering in dissipation the 
pittance so hardly earned by the females of the 
family. What makes those men who associate 
habitually with women, superior to others ? 
What makes that woman who is accustomed 
and at ease in the society of men, superior to 
her sex in general ? Solely because they are 
in the habit of free, graceful, continued con- 
versation with the other sex. Women in this 
way lose their frivolity ; their faculties awaken; 
their delicacies and peculiarities unfold all their 
beauty and captivation in the spirit of intel- 
lectual rivalry. 

The mind of woman is peculiarly constituted, 
and exquisitely adapted for playing upon and 
influencing the finer parts of man's nature ; 



122 WOMAN. 

and whenever the heart of man is dead to in- 
fluence, it is dead to almost every higher and 
purer feeling which alone distinguishes him 
from the beasts of the forest. As women are 
respected by the men of the age, so may, from 
time to time, be traced by an unerring meas- 
ure, the degree of civilization to which that 
generation has attained. 

Emerson says, " We consider man the rep- 
resentative of intellect, and the woman as the 
representative of affection ; but each shares 
the characteristic of the other, only in the 
man one predominates, and in the woman the 
other. We know woman as affectionate, as 
religious, as oracular, as delighting in grace 
and order, possessed of taste. In all ages, 
woman has been the representative of religion. 
In all countries it is the women who fill the 
temples. In every religious movement the 
woman has had an active and powerful part, 
not only in the most civilized, but in the most 
uncivilized countries ; not less in the Moham- 
medan than the Greek and Roman religions. 
She holds man to religion. There is no man 
so reprobate, so careless of religious duty, 
but that he delights to have his wife a saint. 



WOMAN. 123 

All men feel the advantages that abound of 
that quality in a woman. My own feeling is 
that in all ages woman has held substantially 
the same influence. I think that superior wo- 
men are rare. I think that women feel when 
they are in the press, as men of genius are 
said to do among energetic workers — that 
they see through all these efforts with finer 
eyes than their noisy masters. I think that 
all men in the presence of the best women 
feel overlooked and judged, and sometimes 
sentenced. They are the educators in all our 
society. Through their sympathy and quick- 
ness they are the proper mediators between 
those who have knowledge and those who 
want it." 

Whatever may be the customs and laws of 
a country, the women of it decide the morals. 
They reign because they hold possession of 
our affections. But their influence is more or 
less salutary, according to the degree of esteem 
which is granted them. Whether they are 
our idols or companions, the reaction is com- 
plete, and they make us such as they are 
themselves. It seems as if nature connected 
our intelligence with their dignity, as we con- 



124 WOMAN. 

nect our morality with their virtue. This, 
therefore, is a law of eternal justice : Man 
cannot degrade a woman without himself falling 
into degradation ; he cannot raise them with- 
out himself becoming better. Let us cast our 
eyes over the globe, and observe those two 
great divisions of the human race, the east 
and the west. One-half of the ancient world 
remain without progress or thought, and un- 
der the load of a barbarous cultivation ; women 
there are serfs. The other half advance to- 
wards freedom and light ; the women are 
loved and honored. 

The influence which woman exerts is silent 
and still, felt rather than seen, not chaining the 
hands, but restraining our actions by gliding 
into the heart. 

He cannot be an unhappy man who has the 
love and smile of woman to accompany him 
in every department of life. The world may 
look dark and cheerless without — enemies 
may gather in his path — but when he returns 
to his fireside, and feels the tender love of wo- 
man, he forgets his cares and troubles, and 
is a comparatively happy man. He is but 
half prepared for the journey of life, who 



WOMAN. 125 

takes not with him that friend who will for- 
sake him in no emergency — who will divide 
his sorrows — increase his joys — lift the veil 
from his heart — and throw sunshine amid the 
darkest scenes. No man can be miserable 
who has such a companion, be he ever so 
poor, despised, and trodden upon by the 
world. 

Mysterious woman ! Place her among 
flowers, foster her as a tender plant, and she 
is a thing of fancy, waywardness, and some- 
times folly — annoyed by a dew drop, fretted 
by the touch of a butterfly's wing, and ready 
to faint at the rustle of a beetle ; the zephyrs 
are too rough, the showers too heavy, and she 
is overpowered by the perfume of a rose-bud. 
But let real calamity come — rouse her affec- 
tion — enkindle the fires of her heart, and 
mark her then ; how her heart strengthens 
itself — how strong is her purpose. Place her 
in the heat of battle — give her a child, a bird 
— anything she loves or pities, to protect — and 
see her, as in a relative instance, raising her 
white arms as a shield, as her own blood 
crimsons her upturned forehead, praying for 
life to protect the helpless. Transplant her in 



126 WOMAN. 

the dark places of earth — awaken her ener- 
gies to action, and her breath becomes a heal- 
ing — her presence a blessing. She disputes, 
inch by inch, the strides of the stalking pesti- 
lence, when man, the strong and brave, 
shrinks away, pale and affrightened. Misfor- 
tune daunts her not ; she wears away a life of 
silent endurance, and goes forward with less 
timidity than to her bridal. In prosperity 
she is a bud full of odors, waiting but for the 
winds of adversity to scatter them abroad — 
pure gold, valuable, but united in the furnace. 
In short — woman is a miracle — a mystery, the 
center from which radiates the great charm of 
existence. Under the most depressing cir- 
cumstances woman's weakness becomes fear- 
less courage, all her .shrinking and sinking 
passes away, and her spirit acquires the firm- 
ness of marble — adamantine firmness, when 
circumstances drive her to put forth all her 
energies under the inspiration of her affec- 
tions. 

Nothing can be more touching than to be- 
hold a woman who had been all tenderness 
and dependence, and alive to every trivial 
roughness while treading the prosperous paths 



WOMAN. 



127 



of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be 
the comforter and supporter of her husband 
under misfortune, and abiding with unshrink-' 
ing firmness the bitterest winds of adversity. 
As the vine which has long twined its grace- 
ful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by 
it in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is 
rived by the thunderbolt, cling round it with 
its caressing tendrils, and bind up its scattered 
boughs ; so it is beautifully ordained that 
woman, who is the mere dependent and orna- 
ment of man in happiest hours, should be his 
stay and solace when smitten by sudden ca- 
lamity. 




XIII. 




HOME. 

SINGLE bitter word may disquiet an 
entire family for a whole day. One 
surly glance casts a gloom over the 
household, while a smile, like a gleam of sun- 
shine, may light up the darkest and weariest 
hours. Like unexpected flowers, which spring 
up along our path, full of freshness, fragrance 
and beauty, do kind words and gentle acts 
and sweet dispositions, make glad the home 
where peace and blessing dwell. No matter 
how humble the abode, if it be thus garnished 
with grace and sweetened with kindness and 
smiles, the heart will turn lovingly toward it 
from all the tumult of the world, will be the 
dearest spot beneath the circuit of the sun. 

And the influences of home perpetuate 
themselves. The gentle grace of the mother 
lives in the daughter long after her head is 

128 



£W' " 





HOME. 129 

pillowed in the dust of death ; and the fatherly 
kindness feels its echo in the nobility and 
courtesy of sons, who come to wear his mantle 
and to fill his place ; while on the other hand, 
from an unhappy, misgoverned and disordered 
home, go forth persons who shall make other 
homes miserable, and perpetuate the sourness 
and sadness, the contentions and strifes and 
railings which have made their own early 
lives so wretched and distorted. 

Toward the cheerful home, the children 
gather " as clouds and as doves to their win- 
dows," while from the home which is the 
abode of discontent and strife and trouble, 
they fly forth as vultures to rend their prey. 

The class of men who disturb and distress 
the 'world, are not those born and nurtured 
amid the hallowed influences of Christian 
homes ; but rather those whose early life has 
been a scene of trouble and vexation, — who 
have started wrong in the pilgrimage, and 
whose course is one of disaster to themselves, 
and trouble to those around them. 

Webster defines home as a " dwelling- 
place," but it admits of a broader meaning. 
There are brilliant and elegant homes. Some 
9 



130 HOME. 

are wise, thrifty and careful, and others are 
warm and genial, by whose glowing hearths 
any one, at any time, may find enough and to 
spare. There are bright homes and gloomy 
homes. There are homes that hurry and 
bustle through years of incessant labor, until 
one and another of the inmates fall, like the fall- 
ing leaves, and the homes turn to dust. We 
do not say the dairymaid's home compares 
with this last view. Science has done much 
to remove the drudgery in our homes, intro- 
ducing ease and comfort. An ideal home 
must first have a government, but love must 
be the dictator. All the members should 
unite to make home happy, We should have 
light in our homes, heaven's own pure, trans- 
parent light. It matters not whether home 
is clothed in blue and purple, if it is only 
brimful of love, smiles, and gladness. 

Our boards should be spread with everything 
good and enjoyable. We should have birds, 
flowers, pets, everything suggestive of soci- 
ability. Flowers are as indispensable to the 
perfections of a home as to the perfections of 
a plant. Do not give them all the sunniest 
windows and pleasantest corners, crowding 
out the children. 



HOME. ■ 131 

Of the ornamentation about a house, 
although a broad lake lends a charm to the 
scenery, it cannot compare with the babbling 
brook. As the little streamlet goes tumbling 
over the rocks and along the shallow, pebbly- 
bed, it may be a marvelous teacher to the 
children, giving them lessons of enterprise and 
perseverance. 

In our homes we must have industry and 
sympathy. In choosing amusements for the 
children, the latter element must be brought 
in. To fully understand the little ones, you 
must sympathize with them. When a child 
asks questions, don't meet it with, " Oh, don't 
bother me." Tell it all it wants to know. 
Never let your angry passion rise, no matter 
how much you may be tired. For full and 
intelligent happiness in the home circle, a 
library of the best works is necessary. Do not 
introduce the milk and water fiction of the pres- 
ent day, but books of character. Our homes 
should have their Sabbaths and their family 
altars. Around these observances cling many 
of the softest and most sacred memories of our 
lives. 

A close observer of American life said to 



132 



HOME. 



us the other day that a great change had 
come in the last ten years to the home life of 
the country. And in answer to our interro- 
gation, he proceeded to point out the character 
of this change. One point which he made was 
that a great many games of skill and chance 
were being played in New England homes, to- 
day, which were not known, or if known, 
were forbidden by parents ten years ago. 
Our own observation coincides with his on 
this point. We know that chess within the 
last ten years has captured for itself a high 
place in popular regard. It speaks well for 
a people when such an intellectual game can 
become popular. For it takes brains to play 
chess even moderately well, and none but 
clever and thoughtful people would ever like 
it. Checkers are not perhaps more universal, 
but they are more fashionable. They have 
fought their way into high life ; and whereas 
they once found their friends in the village 
tavern and in the farmer's kitchen, they are 
now admitted into the parlors of the wealthy 
and refined. The games played with histor- 
ical cards are also numerous and many of 
them pleasantly exciting. And you find them 



HOME. 133 

in almost every household. Now all this is 
very pleasant and hopeful. It reveals to the 
thinker the fact that home life is more viva- 
cious and happy than it used to be ; that the 
long dull evenings are being enlivened with 
sprightly and stimulating amusements, and 
that the home circle is charged with attrac- 
tions which it once sadly lacked. These 
games are helping to make the homes of the 
country happier, helping to make the children 
more contented with their homes, and in doing 
this they are helping to make the country 
more intelligent and more virtuous. By wise 
parents these games are looked upon as God- 
sends. They help solve the problem of home 
amusements and recreation ; and this, as all 
parents know, is one of the greatest problems 
they have to solve. Parents, make your 
homes as happy as you possibly can for your 
children and their mates. Fill them with fun 
and frolic and the cheerfulness of spirited 
social life. Play these games with your 
children yourselves, and thus share their joys 
with them ; and feed your happiness on the 
spectacle of theirs. A great many homes are 
like the frame of a harp that stands without 



134 HOME. 

strings. In form and outline they' suggest 
music ; but no melody rises from the empty 
spaces ; and thus it happens that home is un- 
attractive, dreary and dull. Let us hope that 
this introduction of pleasant games — which 
will try both the wit and patience of the 
children, and of the older ones for that mat- 
ter, — may become the fashion of the times, 
until every home in the land shall be perfectly 
furnished with these accessories of profit and 
pleasure. For the children's sake, let the 
reformation go on until every child shall have, 
in his father's house, be it humble or costly, 
such appliances and helps for his entertain- 
ment that he shall find his joy under his 
father's roof and in his father's presence. 

" Home, home, sweet, sweet home, 
Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home." 

Among home amusements the best is the 
good old habit of conversation, the talking 
over the events of the day, in bright and 
quick play of wit and fancy, the story which 
brings the laugh, and the speaking the good 
and kind and true things, which all have in 
their hearts. It is not so much by dwelling 
upon what members of the family have in 



HOME. 



135 



common, as bringing each to the ot er some- 
thing interesting and amusing, that home life is 
to be made cheerful and joyous. Each one must 
do his part to make conversation genial and 
happy. We are too ready to converse with 
newspapers and books, to seek some com- 
panion at the store, hotel, or club-room, and to 
forget that home is anything more than a 
place to sleep and eat in. The revival of con- 
versation, the entertainment of one another, as 
a roomful of people will entertain themselves, 
is one secret of a happy home. Wherever it 
is wanting, disease has struck into the root of 
the tree; there is a want which is felt with 
increasing force as time goes on. Conversa- 
tion, in many cases, is just what prevents 
many people from relapsing into utter selfish- 
ness at their firesides. This conversation 
should not simply occupy husband and wife, 
and other older members of the family, but 
extend itself to the children. Parents should 
be careful to talk with them, to enter into their 
life, to share their trifles, to assist in their 
studies, to meet them in the thoughts and 
feelings of their childhood. It is a great step 
in education, when around the evening lamp 



136 HOME. 

are gathered the different members of a fam- 
ily, sharing their occupation with one another 
— the older assisting the younger, each one 
contributing to the entertainment of the 
other, and all feeling that the evening has 
passed only too rapidly away. This is the 
truest and best amusement. It is the healthy 
education of great and noble characters. 
There is the freedom, the breadth, the joy- 
ousness of natural life. The time spent thus 
by parents, in the higher entertainment of 
their children, bears a harvest of eternal bless- 
ings, and these long evenings furnish just the 
time. 

It has been said, that a " man's manners 
form his fortune." Whether this be really so 
or not, it is certain that his manners form his 
reputation — stamp upon him, as it were, his 
current worth in the circles where he moves. 
If his manners are the products of a kind 
heart, they will please, though they be desti- 
tute of graceful polish. There is scarcely 
anything of more importance to a child of 
either sex, than good breeding. If parents 
and teachers perform their duties to the young 
faithfully, there will be comparatively few 
destitute of good manners. 



HOME. 



137 



Visit a family where the parents are civil 
and courteous toward all within their house- 
hold, whether as dwellers or as guests, and 
their children will have good manners, just as 
they learn to talk, from imitation. But re- 
verse the order of things concerning parents, 
and the children learn ill manners, just as in 
the former case they learn good manners, by 
imitation. 

Train children to behave at home as you 
would have them act abroad. It is almost 
certain, that they, while children, conduct 
themselves abroad as they would have been in 
the habit of doing under like circumstances 
when at home. " Be courteous," is an apos- 
tolical injunction, which all should ever re- 
member and obey. 

There is sure to be contentment in a home, 
in the windows of which can be seen birds or 
flowers, and it may also be added that there 
will be the same conditions wherever there 
are pictures on the walls. It is, of 
course, not every one who is a judge of art, 
but even a contemplation of art will educate, 
and it is safe to say that a man cannot have a 
painting in his room and see it day after day 



138 HOME. 

without sooner or later beginning to be able 
to tell its merits or defects, and thus being 
better fitted to judge of others in the future. 
The engravings and chromos seen in the 
homes of the poor may, if measured by the 
critical rules of art, be wretched daubs, but 
they at least show a longing and an aspiration 
after beauty, while their presence helps to 
produce a repose of mind, and brings nothing 
with it but good. The loving manner in 
which children linger over pictures tells how 
deeply this feeling is implanted in the heart, 
and long before they can read, their dawning 
powers are gradually being strengthened by 
these silent educators. 

Nor is the influence which flowers have, any 
less than that of paintings. At all seasons of 
the yeaf they are gladly welcomed. They are 
emblematic of both the joys and sorrows of 
life, and religion has associated them with 
the highest spiritual verities. Faded although 
they sometimes may be, they have the power 
to wake the chords of memory and make us 
children again. At the sick bed and the 
marriage feast, on the altar and the cathedral 
walls, they have a meaning, and the humblest 



HOME, 



139 



home looks brighter where they bloom. A 
few years ago, at horticultural societies in 
England, prizes were offered to villagers for 
the best efforts in cottage gardening, and the 
result was that a great change came over the 
home-life of the people. Instead of gardens 
filled with rank grass and weeds, there could 
be seen flaming hollyhocks, blood-red roses 
and purple geraniums, and a spirit of friendly 
rivalry and emulation was created, leading to 
improvements in households, and aiding habits 
of cleanliness and industry. Let any one 
walk through our markets on these bright 
spring mornings and watch how tenderly some 
poor seamstress will linger over a tiny flower 
and bear it away proudly to cheer the loneli- 
ness of her scantily furnished room, and he 
will admit that if such a little thing can bring 
pleasure or satisfaction, every effort made to 
improve the taste of the masses and lead them 
to make home pleasant is to be commended, 
as weakening the influence of evil and diffus- 
ing a power which will prove a potent factor 
for good. 

Cherish the spirit .of kindly affection. Let 
the love of childhood find a return, never re- 



140 



HOME. 



pulsing the confiding tenderness every child dis- 
plays when surrounded by kindly influences. 
Remember how much of the joy of life flows 
from the sympathetic mingling of congenial 
spirits, and seek to bind such to you closer and 
closer with the golden links of affection's easy 
bondage, 

Cultivate singing in your family. Begin 
when the child is not yet three years old. 
The songs and hymns your childhood sang, 
bring them all back to your memory, and 
teach them to your little ones ; mix them all 
together to meet the varying moods as in after 
life they come over us so mysteriously at 
times. Many a time, in the very whirl of 
business, in the sunshine and gayety of the 
avenue, amid the splendor of the drive in the 
park, some little thing wakes up the memories 
of early youth — the old mill, the cool spring, 
the shady tree by the little school-house — and 
the next instant we almost see again the 
ruddy cheeks, the smiling faces, and the 
merry eyes of schoolmates, some of whom are 
gray-headed now, while most have passed from 
amid earth's weary noises. And, anon, " the 
song my mother sang" springs unbidden to 



HOME. 



141 



the lips, and soothes and sweetens all these 
memories. At other times, amid the crush- 
ing mishaps of business, a merry ditty of the 
olden time breaks in upon the ugly train of 
thought, and throws the mind in another 
channel ; light breaks from behind the cloud 
in the sky, and new courage is given us. The 
honest man goes gladly to his work ; and 
when, the day's labor done, his tools are laid 
aside and he is on his way home, where wife 
and child and the tidy table and cheery fire- 
side await him, how can he but have music in 
his heart to break forth so often into the 
merry whistle or the jocund song ? Moody 
silence, not the merry song, weighs down the 
dishonest tradesman, the perfidious clerk, the 
unfaithful servant, the perjured partner. 

" We accord," says a gentleman who has 
written much, u our unqualified indorsement 
of the above ; and even now, although we 
have passed our three-score years, the songs 
of our youth are often resurrected, and we 
love to hum them over again, and often do so, 
in the lone hours of the night when there are 
none to hear save ourself and the drowsy 
1 gray spiders on the wall ; ' and while doing 



142 HOME. 

so, we feel less inclined toward ' treason, strata- 
gem, and spoils,' than at any other hour within 
the twenty-four. We fondly look back to the 
days when we were as musical as a hand 
organ — and perhaps as ' cracked ' as many of 
them, too — those days when we so lightly 
touched the keys to the measure of the songs 
we sang. We often regret time, circumstance, 
and advancing years have so effectually quieted 
our vocal muse ; still we revert to the ballads 
of yore, and mentally exclaim, 

" ' Sing me the songs that to me were so dear, 
Long, long ago ; long, long ago.' " 




XIV. 




MOTHERS. 

HE queen that sits upon the throne of 
home, crowned and sceptered as none 
Vf P other ever can be, is — mother. Her 
enthronement is complete, her reign unrivalled, 
and the moral issues of her empire are eternal. 
" Her children arise up, and call her blessed." 

Rebellious, at times, as the subjects of her 
government may be, she rules them with 
marvellous patience, winning tenderness, and 
undying love. She so presents and exempli- 
fies divine truth, that it reproduces itself in 
the happiest development of childhood — 
character and life. 

Her memory is sacred while she lives, and 
becomes a perpetual inspiration, even when 
the bright flowers bloom above her sleeping 
dust. She is an incarnation of goodness to 
the child, and hence her immense power. 

143 



144 MOTHERS. 

Scotland, with her well-known reverence for 
motherhood, insists that " An ounce of mother 
is worth more than a pound of clergy." 

Napoleon cherished a high conception of a 
mother's power, and believed that the mothers 
of the land could shape the destinies of his 
beloved France. Hence he said in his sen- 
tentious, laconic style : " The great need of 
France is mothers." 

The ancient orator bestowed a flattering 
compliment upon the homes of Roman mothers 
when he said, " The empire is at the fireside." 
Who can think of the influence that a mother 
wields in the home, and not be impressed 
with its far-reaching results ! What revolu- 
tions would take place in our families and com- 
munities if that strange, magnetic power were 
fully consecrated to the welfare of the child 
and the glory of God ! 

Mohammed expressed a great truth when he 
said that " Paradise is at the feet of mothers." 

There is one vision that never fades from 
the soul, and that is the vision of mother and 
home. No man in all his weary wanderings 
ever goes out beyond the overshadowing arch 
of home. 



MOTHERS. I 4 5 

Let him stand on the surf-beaten coast of 
the Atlantic, or roam over western wilds, and 
every dash of the wave and murmur of the 
breeze will whisper home, sweet home. 

Set him down amid the glaciers of the 
North, and even there thoughts of home, too 
warm to be chilled, by the eternal frosts, will 
float in upon him. 

Let him rove through the green, waving 
groves, and over the sunny slopes of the South, 
and in the smile of the soft skies, and in the 
kiss of the balmy breeze, home will live again. 

John Randolph was once heard to say that 
only one thing saved him from atheism, and 
that was the tender remembrance of the hour 
when a devout mother, kneeling by his side, 
took his little hand in hers, and taught him to 
say, " Our Father, who art in Heaven." 

God hasten the time when our families, 
everywhere, shall catch the cry of childhood 
as it swells up over all the land, like the voice 
of God's own sweet evangel, calling the home 
— the home to enter the children's temple, 
and crowd its altars with the best offerings of 
sympathy and service. 

The mother is the luminary that shines and 
10 ' 



1 46 MOTHERS, 

reigns alone in the early child-life ; as years 
advance, the scepter is divided and the teacher 
shares the sway. 

We often think, as we meet the earnest gaze 
of the interested pupil, and watch the mind 
working and the young thought shaping to 
the will, " Why is it that mothers so willing- 
ly yield to others this broad sphere of their 
domain, and are content to foster the physical 
and external life of their children, leaving the 
intellectual and spiritual to grow without 
their aid ? " 

One would suppose that capable mothers 
would jealously keep to themselves the high 
privilege of training the mind, and so bind 
their children to themselves by ties which are 
stronger than the mere physical tie can be. 

We who have grown to realize to whom we 
are debtors, are thrilled with delight as we 
think of those who have been the parents of 
our intellectual life — who seem nearer to us 
than our familiar friends — Bryant, Longfellow, 
Ruskin, Emerson and Carlyle, and many 
another. How they have covered our lives 
with a rich broidery of beautiful and inspiring 
thought, so that to live in the same world, 
and at the same time, seems a blessing. 



MOTHERS. 147 

So may the mother weave into the life 
of her children thoughts and feelings, rich, 
beautiful, grand and noble, which will make 
all after-life brighter and better. 

Many a good mother may think she has no 
time for this mind and soul culture, but we 
find no lack of robes and ruffles, and except 
in cases where the daily bread of the family 
must be earned by daily work, away from 
home, as is done by many a weary mother, 
we must feel that there is not one who cannot 
command one half hour each morning, when 
the mind is fresh and vigorous, to collect her 
children around her, and minister for a little 
to their higher' wants. 

Says that admirably pure writer, T. S. 
Arthur : " For myself, I am sure that a differ- 
ent mother would have made me a different 
man. When a boy I was too much like the 
self-willed, excitable C — ; but the tenderness 
with which my mother always treated me, and 
the unimpassioned but earnest manner in 
which she reproved and corrected my faults, 
subdued my unruly temper. When I became 
restless or impatient, she always had a book 
to read to me, or a story to tell, or had some 



1 48 MOTHERS. 

device to save me from myself. My father 
was neither harsh nor indulgent towards me ; 
I cherish his memory with respect and love. 
But I have different feelings when I think of 
my mother. I often feel, even now, as if she 
were near me — as if her cheek were laid to 
mine. My father would place his hand upon 
my head, caressingly, but my mother would 
lay her cheek against mine. I did not expect 
my father to do more ; for him it was a 
natural expression of affection. Her kiss upon 
my cheek, her warm embrace, are all felt now, 
and the older I grow, the more holy seem the 
influences that surrounded me in childhood." 

All honor to mother! Without her smiles 
the world would lose its brightness — society's 
charm would exist no longer. Christianity 
would languish without her aid. " In whose 
principles,'* said the dying daughter of Ethan 
Allen to her sceptical father — " in whose prin- 
ciples shall I die — yours or my Christian 
mother's ? " The stern old hero of Ticonderoga 
brushed away a tear from his eye as he turned 
away, and with the same rough voice which 
summoned the British to surrender, now tre- 
mulous with deep emotion, said— " in your 



MOTHERS. 149 

Christian mother's, child, in your mother's." 
Sacred to the heart is the memory of a mother's 
love. 

Benjamin Franklin was accustomed to refer 
to his mother in the tenderest tone of filial 
affection. His respect and affection for her 
were manifested, among other ways, in fre- 
quent presents, that contributed to her com- 
fort and solace in her advancing years. In 
one of his letters to her, for example, he sends 
her a moidore, a gold piece of the value of six 
dollars, " toward chaise hire," said he, " that 
you may ride warm to meetings during the 
winter." In another he gives her an account 
of the growth and improvement of his son and 
daughter — topics which, as he well understood, 
are ever as dear to the grandmother as to the 
mother. 

Henry Clay, the pride and honor of his 
country, always expressed feelings of profound 
affection and veneration for his mother. A 
habitual correspondence and enduring affec- 
tion subsisted between them to the last hour 
of life. Mr. Clay ever spoke of her as a 
model of maternal character and female ex- 
cellence, and it is said that he never met his 



l5o MOTHERS. 

constituents in Woodford county, after her 
death, without some allusion to her, which 
deeply affected both him and his audience. 
And nearly the last words uttered by this 
great statesman, when he came to die, were, 
" Mother, mother, mother." It is natural for 
us to feel that she must have been a good 
mother, that was loved and so dutifully served 
by such a boy, and that neither could have 
been wanting in rare virtues. 

If each mother, according to her several 
ability, seeks to develop the higher and better 
faculties of her children, the reward will be as 
great as the aim is noble. 

Who has the mind or character in hand 
while it is yet so flexible and ductile that it 
can be turned in any direction, or formed in 
any shape ? It is the mother. From her own 
nature, and the nature of her child, it results 
that its first impressions must be taken from 
her. And she has every advantage for dis- 
charging the duty. She is always with her 
child — if she is where mothers ought to be — 
sees continually the workings of faculties ; 
where they need to be restrained, and where 
led and attracted. Early as she may begin 



MOTHERS. l5l 

her task, let her be assured, that her labor 
will not be lost because undertaken too soon. 
Mind, from the first hour of its existence, is 
ever acting ; and soon may a mother see that, 
carefully as she may study her child, quite as 
carefully is her child studying her. Let her 
watch the varying expression of its speaking 
face, as its eyes follow her, and she will per- 
ceive its mind is imbibing impressions from 
everything it sees her do ; and thus showing, 
that, before the lips have begun to utter 
words, the mind has begun to act, and to form 
a character. Let her watch on ; and when, 
under her care, the expanding faculties have 
begun to display themselves in the sportive- 
ness of play, how often will she be surprised 
to find the elements of character already fixed, 
when she has least expected it. She has but 
to watch, and she will find the embryo tyrant 
or philanthropist, warrior or peace-maker, 
with her in her nursery ; and then, if ever, 
her constant prayer should be, " How shall I 
order the child, and what shall I do unto 
him ? " For, what he is to be, and what he is 
to do, in any of these characters, she must 
now decide. It is a law of our being that 



1 52 MOTHERS. 

makes it so ; a law that I could wish were 
written on every mother's heart by the finger 
of God, and on the walls of her nursery in 
letters of gold, that the mind of childhood is 
like wax to receive, but like marble to hold, 
every impression made upon it, be it for good 
or for evil. Let her then improve her power 
as she ought, " being steadfast, unmovable, 
always abounding in the work " which God 
requires at her hands ; and let her know that 
her labor is not in vain in the Lord. For, 
even though her own eyes may not be privi- 
leged to witness in her child all that is noble 
and great and good, she may at least save him 
when her course on earth is finished. It is no 
picture of the imagination that I hold out, 
when I ask you to come and see the son of a 
faithful mother, who has long pursued his 
course of crime, till he seems hardened against 
everything good or true ; yea, at times " sits 
in the seat of the scorner," and scoffs at every- 
thing holy and good — but yet hardened and 
dead as his heart may seem, as to everything 
else you may urge, there is one point on 
which, till his dying day, he can be made to 
feel. You touch it when you remind him of 



MOTHERS. 1 53 

what he saw and felt when a child under the 
care of a tender mother. His sensibilities there 
he never utterly loses ; and often, often, by 
that, as the last cord which holds him from ut- 
ter perdition, is the prodigal drawn back and 
restored ; so that, though " dead, he is alive 
again," though once " lost, he is found." 

Such are some of the illustrations of a 
mother's power to do good to those most dear 
to her, and of the responsibility that springs , 
from it. There is no influence so powerful as 
hers on the comine destinies of the church and 
the world. She acts a part in forming the min- 
isters of religion and the rulers of the land, 
without which all subsequent training is com- 
paratively vain. And to her, also, it falls to 
train those who are .to be mothers when she is 
gone, and to do for their generation what she 
has done for hers. 

Honor the dear old mother. Time has scat- 
tered the snowy flakes on her brow, plowed 
deep furrows on her cheeks, but. is she not 
sweet and beautiful now ? The lips are thin 
and shrunken, but those are the lips which 
have kissed many a hot tear from the childish 
cheeks, and they are the sweetest lips in all the 



1 54 MOTHERS. 

world. The eye is dim, yet it glows with the 
soft radiance of holy love which can never fade. 
Ah, yes, she is a dear old mother. The sands 
of life are nearly run out, but feeble as she is, 
she will go further and reach down lower for 
you than any other upon earth. You cannot 
walk into a midnight where she cannot see 
you ; you cannot enter a prison whose bars 
will keep her out ; you can never mount a 
scaffold too high for her to reach that she may 
kiss and bless you in evidence of her deathless 
love. When the world shall despise and for- 
sake you, when it leaves you by the wayside 
to die unnoticed, the dear old mother will 
gather you in her feeble arms and carry you 
home and tell you of all your virtues until you 
almost forget that your soul is disfigured by 
vices. Love her tenderly and cheer her de- 
clining years with holy devotion. 





XV. 
TIRED MOTHERS. 

LITTLE elbow leans upon your knee — 

Your tired knee that has so much to bear- 
A child's dear eyes are looking lovingly 
From underneath a thatch of tangled hair. 
Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch 

Of warm, moist fingers holding you so tight ; 
You do not prize the blessing overmuch — 
You almost are too tired to pray to-night. 

But it is blessedness ! A year ago 

I did not see it as I do to-day — 
We are all so dull and thankless, and too slow 

To catch the sunshine till it slips away. 
And now it seems surpassing strange to me 

That while I wore the badge of motherhood 
I did not kiss more oft and tenderly 

The little child that brought me only good. 

And if, some night, when you sit down to rest, 
You miss the elbow from your tired knee ; 

This restless curly head from off your breast ; 
This lisping tongue that chatters constantly ; 

155 



1 56 TIRED MOTHERS. 

If from your own the dimpled hands had slipped, 
And ne'er would nestle in your palm again ; 

If the white feet into the grave had tripped — 
I could not blame you for your heartache then. 

I wonder so that mothers ever fret 

At their little children clinging to their gowns ; 
Or that the foot-prints, when the day is wet, 

Are ever black enough to make them frown 1 
If I could find a little muddy boot, 

Or cap, or jacket, on my chamber floor — 
If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot, 

And hear it patter in my house once more ; 

If I could mend a broken cart to-day, 

To-morrow make a kite to reach the sky — 
There is no woman in God's world could say 

She was more blissfully content than I ! 
But, ah, the dainty pillow next mine own 

Is never rumpled by a shining head, 
My singing birdling from its nest has flown— 

The little boy I used to kiss — is dead ! 




XVI. 




RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS. 

ft 

HERE is, perhaps, no duty more fre- 
quently inculcated and enjoined in 
the Bible, than that conveyed to the 
mind and understanding by the three words 
which we have placed at the head of this 
chapter. The family is of divine origin — insti- 
tuted by Jehovah himself. He saw that it 
was not good that man should be alone, and 
created woman full of tenderness and love, 
blooming with beauty, and blushing with 
charms, without whom man, even in Para- 
dise, could not be completely happy. The 
mutual desire of each for the other was fully 
realized in that union which of the twain made 
one flesh. It was required of them to obey 
their Heavenly Father, as it is of their offspring 
that they obey their earthly parents. 

The spirit of disobedience soon manifested 
itself in the first human pair, and was trans- 

157 



1 58 RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS. 

mitted to their children and to their children's 
children, and will continue down to the latest 
posterity. Notwithstanding this, however, 
the command of God is to all children, " obey 
your parents ; " and the command of parents, 
is " bring up your children in the nurture and 
admonition of the Lord." This is no less 
imperative than that given to children. In 
the parents is placed the authority to edu- 
cate, instruct, and train their children. And 
to the children it is said, " obey your parents 
in all things, for this is right and well-pleasing 
to the Lord." 

Young parent, do you think that your 
children are yours, to have and to hold for 
your own pleasure and profit ? — that you have 
a right to do what you will with them ? You 
mistake ; they are but lent to you. Every 
child is but a sacred trust — a responsibility, 
than which there is none more mighty or fear- 
ful in life. " Train up this child for Me. I will 
require him at thy hands," says our Maker to 
every parent who receives a child. Judging 
by the declaration of inspiration, " Train up a 
child in the way he should go, and when he is 
old he will not depart from it," how many of 



RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS. i5g 

our present men and women were trained up 
in that way ; and what kind of an account will 
have to be given by their parents ? 

If you find an error in a child's mind, follow 
it up till he is rid of it. Repeat and fix atten- 
tion on the exact error, until it can never be 
committed aeain. One clear and distinct idea 
is worth a world of misty ones. Time is of 
no consequence in comparison to the object. 
Give the child possession of one clear, distinct 
truth, and it becomes to him a center of light. 
In all your teaching — no matter what time it 
takes — never leave your pupil till you know 
he has in his mind your exact thought. In 
all explanations to your child, — and you will 
find innumerable explanations called for, — be 
patient and considerate, and leave no sense of 
vagueness behind, neither a repressive influ- 
ence. 

Children are more easily led to be good by 
examples of loving kindness, and tales of well- 
doing in others, than threatened into obedi- 
ence by records of sin, crime and punishment. 
Then on the infant mind impress sincerity, 
truth, honesty, benevolence and their kindred 
virtues, and the welfare of your child will be 



160 RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS. 

insured not only during this life, but the life 
to come. Oh, what a responsibility to form a 
creature, the frailest and feeblest that heaven 
has made, into the intelligent and fearless 
sovereign of the whole animated creation, 
the interpreter and adorer and almost the 
representative of Divinity — to train the igno- 
rance and weakness of infancy into all the 
virtue and power and wisdom of mature 
years ! 

Give children a sound moral and literary 
education — useful learning for sails, and integ- 
rity for ballast — set them afloat upon the sea 
of life, and their voyage will be prosperous in 
the best sense of the word. 

The child is no more dependent on his 
parents for his food and raiment, than for intel- 
lectual and religious nurture. If the former 
two be withheld, the little one soon perishes. 
If these be duly administered, and mental and 
religious culture be withholden, the child 
grows up to bodily maturity with strong ani- 
mal passions and desires, and being goaded 
on by these, knows nothing of the restraints 
felt by one who has been carefully trained 
and instructed in the things spiritual, as well 



RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS. 161 

as provided for in things temporal, and conse- 
quently is fit for little else than the doing of 
what should be left undone — and thus incur- 
ring the penalty of broken law. Better, far 
better for both parent and child, had the little 
one not been born, than that he should have 
a birth only that his body may be nourished 
to the stature of manhood. 

For the want of the due exercise of paren- 
tal authority multitudes of children of both 
sexes are growing up candidates for every 
evil work. How often have we seen the 
mother parley with her darling child at the 
table, for example : — There are pies, cakes, 
preserves, and the like upon the table, and 
plainer food also ; the child, prompted by 
pampered appetite, asks for pie, perhaps ; 
the mother says no — you must eat some of 
the coarser food first — the child says not so. 
After much effort to persuade, and not a little 
noise and clamor on the part of the dear little 
rebel, the mother yields — the child has con- 
quered — and this same performance is gone 
through with every day, or as often as the 
temptation arises. What a fearful responsi- 
bility rests upon such parents — deliberately 
ii 



1 62 RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS. 

ruining their children, — making them wretched 
for this world, even to say nothing of that 
which is to come. No such child knows any- 
thing about obedience. If he ever does what 
he is told to do, it is from some other motive 
than that of obedience. Such a child will not 
be very likely to obey God, or regard man 
any farther than prompted by self-interest. 

The main effort in this life with many seems 
to be to avoid responsibility. My friends, 
don't cheat yourselves ; this cannot be done. 
If there is an eternity, somewhere in that 
eternity responsibility must be met. The 
responsibilities of life are tremendous. Read- 
er, God has something for you to do, and 
which you can do better than any other being 
in the universe, or He would not have created 
you to do it, and somewhere in existence you 
will work out the problem of your destiny. 
This must be ! God makes no mistakes ; 
so don't shirk responsibility, for you cannot 
if you would. Face it like a man ! and dis- 
charge it faithfully. 




XVII. 
AMUSEMENTS. 

LD boys have playthings as well as 
young ones ; the difference is only in 
the price. The permission of lawful 
enjoyment is the surest method to prevent 
unlawful gratifications. Fun is worth more 
than physic, and whoever invents or discovers 
a new supply deserves the name of a public 
benefactor. A man cannot burrow in his 
counting-room for ten or twenty of the best 
years of his life, and come out as much of a 
man and as little of a mole as when he went 
in. Repose beautifies the heart and adorns 
the life. It is to labor what the shadow is to" 
the sun. There is as much science in recrea- 
tion as in labor. To a brisk bustling man, 
nothing makes time pass heavily but pastime. 
Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness 
fixed and permanent. 

" All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ; 
All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy." 

163 



1 64 AMUSEMENTS. 

Most men that follow sports, make them a 
principal part of their life ; not reflecting that 
while they are diverting themselves, they are 
throwing away time. We alter the very 
nature and design of recreation, when we 
make a business of it. He that follows his 
recreation instead of his business shall, in a 
little time, have no business to follow. Of all 
diversions of life, there is none so proper to 
fill up its empty spaces, as the reading of 
useful and entertaining authors ; and with 
that the conversation of a well-chosen friend. 

It has been assumed — and it is evidently a 
true position — that inaction is not the rest that 
re-invigorates the exhausted energies of either 
the mind or body, but a new direction of 
effort, by which new muscles of the body, or 
new faculties of the mind, are brought into 
activity. The true repose, then, which should 
follow every life-conflict — and they are of 
almost daily occurrence — is an entire diversion 
of the thoughts and feelings into some new 
channel. If this be not done, there can be no 
rest ; for the current of thought will flow on 
unchecked, until the mind becomes diseased, 
and loses half its power. 

And herein we see the use of amuse- 



AMUSEMENTS. 165 

ments, or these innocent employments that 
divert the mind, and fill it with pleasing 
emotions. After the business of the day is 
over, these come in their natural order, to 
refresh and strengthen for new efforts ; and it 
is more in accordance with the dictates of 
right reason to seek for re-invigoration in 
these than in dull inaction. 

Amusements, therefore, we hold to be es- 
sential to the health of both body and mind. 
But, like every other good, they are liable to 
be perverted ; and the young are more in 
danger of perverting them than those who 
have passed the prime of life. Nearly all the 
various amusements, public and private, that 
are entered into at this day, are innocent and 
useful in themselves, although some of them 
are sadly perverted to evil ends. Dancing, 
games, concerts, the opera, scenic representa- 
tions, etc., are all good in themselves, and 
may be enjoyed innocently and beneficially 
by all. In cards, for instance, there is no 
evil abstractly, nor in a game of cards ; but 
gambling is a great evil — one from which 
every honest mind shrinks with horror. When 
made a school of morals, the stage is a power- 
ful teacher of truth, because it shows us vice 



1 66 AMUSEMENTS. 

or virtue in living personifications, but as it 
now is, we are compelled to acknowledge that 
it is a poor place of resort for the strengthen- 
ing of virtuous principles. 

From this brief presentation of the subject, 
every one must see that the views taken by 
those who inveigh against amusements, as 
either sinful or entirely useless, are erroneous, 
and founded upon false notions of man's moral 
nature. Our life here is for the development 
and perfection of our characters as immortal 
beings, created originally in true order, and 
afforded all possible means for a return to 
true order. 

There are boys so circumstanced, as to be 
deprived of nearly all amusements at an age 
when work and play should each come in right 
order. These are apt to make men who have 
little sympathy for young people, and who 
regard all amusements as waste of time, and 
enervating to the character. They constantly 
refer back to their own uncheered boyhood 
as evidence that amusements are valueless ; 
not thinking that the very aspect they show 
to the world is one of the strong arguments 
in favor of their balancing influence. From 
men of this class, as well as from religious 



AMUSEMENTS. 167 

ascetics, we have a steady warfare upon all 
amusements. 

The true end of all amusement is, as we 
have seen, that recreation of the mind which 
will enable it the better to perform its useful 
tasks when the hour of duty returns. It 
should come up from them re-invigorated ; 
and this can hardly be the case, if there should 
be in them anything that excites low, sensual, 
or impure emotions ; or that insinuates false 
sentiments on any subject. 

The effect of amusements on your state of 
mind will always indicate this utility or hurt- 
fulness. If, after their enjoyment, you return 
to your regular duties, with a mind re-invigor- 
ated and cheerful, then they have done you 
good. But, if the usual things that demand 
your care and labor seem afterwards tame and 
irksome, and your thought wanders away 
from them to the evenings entertainments, 
then you may well question their good influ- 
ence. Beware, in this case, how you let mere 
amusement and recreation make large demands 
on your leisure time ; for you are in danger 
of being drawn away from that abiding inter- 
est in useful employments by which alone 
man rises in the scale of worldly prosperity, 
or becomes honorable and happy. 



XVIII. 




ASSOCIATIONS. 

ASHINGTON was wont to say, "Be 
courteous to all, but intimate with 
few, and let those few be well tried 
before you give them your confidence." It 
should be the aim of young men to go into 
good society. We do not mean the rich, the 
proud and fashionable, but the society of the 
wise, the intelligent and good. Where you 
find men that know more than you do, and 
from whose conversation one can gain infor- 
mation, it is always safe to be found. It has 
broken down many a man by associating with 
the low and vulgar, where the ribald song 
and the indecent story were introduced to 
excite laughter and influence the bad passions. 
Lord Clarendon has attributed his success 
and happiness in life to associating with 
persons more learned and virtuous than him- 

168 



ASSOCIATIONS. 169 

self. If you wish to be respected — if you 
desire happiness and not misery, we advise 
you to associate with the intelligent and 
good. Strive for mental excellence and strict 
integrity, and you never will be found in the 
sinks of pollution, and on the benches of 
retailers and gamblers. Once habituate your- 
self to a virtuous course — once secure a love 
of good society, and no punishment would be 
greater than by accident to be obliged for a 
half a day to associate with the low and 
vulgar. 

Scarcely anything has a more decisive 
influence in forming the character and fixing 
the destiny of a young man for both worlds, 
than the company he keeps. It is a maxim 
of Divine wisdom, and it comes to you con- 
firmed by the experience of all ages, — He that 
walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a 
companion of fools shall be destroyed. We 
have often wished that we had kept an account 
of the youths we have known to be ruined by 
this cause. The number is fearfully large ; 
and of all who have to our knowledge been 
corrupted in their morals and blasted in their 
prospects for time and eternity, we can 



I JO ASSOCIATIONS. 

recollect very few whose career in vice and 
infamy could not be traced back to the influ- 
ence of evil companions. Oh, how many 
apprentices and clerks and students and young 
professional men have we known utterly and 
forever ruined by the cause here referred to ! 
Once of fair morals and bright prospects, the 
pride of fond parents and the hope of society, 
in an unguarded hour they were drawn into 
the society of unprincipled associates, went 
with them to the gaming-table, to the house 
of infamy, to the place of drinking, revelry, 
and profane mirth, and having thus broken 
away from the bonds of virtue, of decency, 
and self-respect, they found themselves as it 
were on enchanted ground, within the inex- 
tricable toils of the destroyer, and were 
drawn deeper and deeper in corruption and 
shame, till character gone, hope gone, all gone, 
they sunk, some into an untimely grave, vic- 
tims of their vices, while others were obliged 
to quit their business and their prospects, and 
lived a grief and a sorrow to their parents and 
their friends. Oh that we could call up and 
place these unhappy persons before you, 
and let you see them in all their degra- 



ASSOCIA TIONS. 1 7 1 

dation and loss of hope for both worlds ! 
Sure we are that, warned by their melancholy 
example and miserable end, you would thank 
us for this word of admonition, and shun, 
as you would the way of perdition, the society 
of the immoral and the vicious. Beware of 
the beginnings of evil. It is much easier to 
avoid bad company, than to break away from 
it when you are once within its bewildering, 
deadening influence. You may shun evil 
companions, if you please ; but when you are 
linked in with them, you are committed to 
your fate, and no resolution will probably 
avail to break the connection or save you 
from the fatal consequences of its continuance. 
Every young man may see how much 
depends upon his choice of associates. If he 
mingle with those who are governed by right 
principles, his own good purposes will be 
strengthened, and he will strengthen others in 
return. But if he mingle with those who 
make light of virtue, and revel in selfish and 
sensual indulgences, he will find his own 
respect for virtue growing weaker, and he 
will gradually become more and more in love 
with the grosser enjoyments of sense, that 



172 ASSOCIATIONS. 

drag a man downward, instead of lifting him 
upward, and throw a mist of obscurity over all 
his moral perceptions. 

It has been truly said, an author is known 
by his writings, a mother by her daughter, a 
fool by his words, and all men by their com- 
panions. 

Intercourse with persons of decided virtue 
and excellence is of great importance in the 
formation of a good character. The force of 
example is powerful ; we are creatures of 
imitation, and, by a necessary influence, our 
tempers and habits are very much formed 
on the model of those with whom we famil- 
iarly associate. Better be alone than in bad 
company. Evil communications corrupt good 
manners. Ill qualities are catching as well as 
diseases ; and the mind is at least as much, if 
not a great deal more, liable to infection, than 
the body. Go with mean people, and you 
think life is mean. 

It is rare that a novice in iniquity falls at 
once into the hands of finished seducers. 
Novices are usually reached at first by young 
men of their own age, who have recently 
taken their first degrees in glaring sin. The 



AS SO CIA TIONS. 1 7 3 

merry, roystering jollity of such sinners, their 
gayety of spirit, their apparent happiness, the 
glowing descriptions they give of their festivi- 
ties, the sly hints they throw out at the green- 
ness of the uninitiated, the half-playful, half- 
earnest banterings with which they greet their 
bashful excuses for not joining in their vices, 
are the first seductive influences which usually 
reach young men from the wicked. By these 
means they learn to love their society ; they 
lose their relish for the purity and quiet of 
home ; they feel mortified at their ignorance 
of iniquitous practices ; until, surrendering 
themselves to the guidance of these children 
of sin, they take costly lessons for themselves 
in Sabbath -breaking, in drinking revels, and 
in forbidden visits to various places of amuse- 
ment. 

The power of example is proverbial. We 
are creatures of imitation, and nothing is of 
more importance to young men than the 
choice of their companions. If they select for 
their associates the intelligent, the virtuous, 
and the enterprising, great and most happy 
will be the effects on their own character and 
habits. With these living, breathing patterns 



1 74 ASSOCIA TIONS. 

of excellence before them, they can hardly 
fail to feel a disgust at everything that is low, 
unworthy, and vicious, and be inspired with a 
desire to advance in whatever is praiseworthy 
and good. It is needless to add, the opposite 
of all this is the certain consequence of intimacy 
with persons of bad habits and profligate lives. 

Here, then, young man, is the turning-point 
of your destiny. When your heart first feels 
enchanted by young men whom you know to 
be the occasion of grief to their friends and 
suspicion to their employers, your danger is 
imminent and extreme. The fact that you fail 
to discern the full enormity of their practices, 
is the sign that you are marked for destruction. 

Let every young man, then, seek for asso- 
ciations in life ; but let him be exceedingly 
careful how he make his selection. Almost 
everything depends upon its being done with 
prudence. 

Evil companions are, therefore, to be totally 
avoided. Safety is to be purchased only at the 
price of entire abstinence from their society ; 
for, as he who tastes his first glass of intoxi- 
cating drink has no security against becoming 
a drunkard, so he who finds a little delight in 



ASSOCIATIONS. 



175 



the society of partially corrupted persons has 
abandoned the ground of absolute safety. He 
is within a charmed circle. The incantation 
has begun. The demon of the circle is nigh. 
Soon will he present the bond by which the 
young dupe will sign away his virtue, his 
hope, his soul. Beware ! oh, beware, then, 
of every one of the seducers to vice ! Reject 
the bad book ; turn away from the vile picture ; 
refuse your company to the wicked ! Seek 
God and his children ; so shall you happily 
escape the dangers of life, and win a crown of 
eternal glory ! 

The following beautiful allegory is translated 
from the German : Tophronius, a wise teacher, 
would not suffer even his grown-up sons and 
daughters to associate with those whose 
conduct was not pure and upright. " Dear 
father," said the gentle Eulalia to him one 
day, when he forbade her, in company with 
her brother, to visit the volatile Lucinda, 
" dear father, you must think us very childish, 
if you imagine that we should be exposed to 
danger by it." The father took in silence a 
dead coal from the hearth, and reached it to his 
daughter. " It will not burn you, my child ; 



176 ASSOCIATIONS. 

take it." Eulalia did so, and behold ! her 
delicate white hand was soiled and blackened, 
and as it chanced her white dress also. " We 
cannot be too careful in handling coals," said 
Eulalia, in vexation. " Yes, truly," said her 
father ; " you see, my child, that coals, even 
if they do not burn, blacken. So it is with 
the company of the vicious." 

No man can allow himself to associate, with- 
out prejudice, with the profane, the Sabbath- 
breakers, the drunken, and the licentious, for 
he lowers himself, without elevating them. 
The sweep is not made the less black by 
rubbing against the well-dressed and the clean, 
while they are inevitably defiled. The Per- 
sians have this beautiful fable to show the 
value of good company : " A philosopher was 
one day astonished by the fragrance of a piece 
of clay. On asking how it came to have so 
sweet a perfume, the clay answered : ' I was 
once a piece of common clay, but I was placed 
for some time in the company of a rose, and 
the sweet quality of my company was com- 
municated to me ; otherwise. I should only be 
a piece of common clay, as I appear to be.' ,: 
Tell me with whom thou art found, and I will 



ASSOCIATIONS. 177 

tell thee whom thou art : let me know thy 
chosen employment, and what to expect from 
thee I know. Describe your company and 
you will describe yourself. 

The awfully sad consequences of evil associa- 
tions is exhibited in the history of almost all 
criminals. A young man, lately executed, 
made the following speech on the gallows : 
" This is a solemn day for me, boys ! I hope 
this will be a warning to you against bad 
company — I hope it will be a lesson to all 
young people, and old as well as young, rich 
and poor. It was that that brought me here 
to-day to my last end, though I am innocent 
of the murder I am about to suffer for. Before 
my God I am innocent of the murder! I 
never committed this or any other murder. 
I know nothing of it. I am going to meet 
my Maker in a few minutes. May the Lord 
have mercy on my soul ! Amen, amen." 
What a terrible warning his melancholy ex- 
ample affords to young men never to deviate 
from the straight line of duty. Live with the 
culpable, and you will be very likely to die 
with the criminal. Bad company is like a 
nail driven into a post, which after the first or 
12 



178 ASSOCIATIONS. 

second blow, may be drawn out with little diffi- 
culty ; but being once driven in up to the head, 
the pinchers cannot take hold to draw it out, 
which can only be done by the destruction of 
the wood. Let you be ever so pure, you 
cannot associate with bad companions without 
falling into bad odor. Evil company is like 
tobacco smoke— you cannot be long in its 
presence without carrying away the taint of 
it. Tell us whom you choose and prefer as 
companions, and we certainly can tell who 
you are like. Do you love the society of the 
vulgar ? Then you are already debased in 
your sentiments. Do you seek to be with the 
profane ? in your heart you are like them. 
Are jesters and buffoons your choice friends ? 
He who loves to laugh at folly is himself a 
fool. Do you love and seek the society of the 
wise and good ? Is this your habit ? Had 
you rather take the lowest seat among these 
than the highest seat among others ? Then 
you have already learned to be good. You 
may not make very much progress, but even 
a good beginning is not to be despised. Hold 
on your way, and seek to be the companion 
of those that fear God. So you shall be wise 
for yourself, and wise for eternity. 





XIX. 
FRIENDSHIP. 

RIENDSHIP is a sweet attraction of 
the heart toward the merit we esteem 
or the perfections we admire, and pro- 
duces a mutual inclination between two or 
more persons, to promote each other's interest, 
knowledge, virtue and happiness. The sweet- 
est and most satisfactory connections in life 
are those formed between persons of con- 
genial minds, equally linked together by the 
conformity of their virtues, and by all the ties 
of esteem. Friendship is the most sacred of 
all moral bonds. Trusts of confidence, with- 
out any express stipulation or caution, are 
yet, in the very nature of them, as sacred as 
if they were guarded with a thousand articles 
or conditions. Friendship has a notable effect 
upon all states and conditions. It relieves 
our cares, raises our hopes, and abates our 

179 



180 FRIENDSHIP. 

fears. A friend who relates his success, talks 
himself into a new pleasure ; and by opening 
his misfortunes, leaves part of them behind 
him. Friendship improves happiness, and 
abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and 
dividing our grief. ** 

Friendship is a flower that blooms in all 
seasons ; it may be seen flourishing on the 
snow-capped mountains of Northern Russia, 
as well as in more favored valleys of sunny 
Italy, everywhere cheering us by its exquisite 
and indescribable charms. No surveyed chart, 
no national boundary line, no rugged moun- 
tain or steep declining vale, put a limit to its 
growth. Wherever it is watered with the 
dews of kindness and affection, there you may 
be sure to find it. Allied in closest compan- 
ionship with its twin sister, Charity, it enters 
the abode of sorrow and wretchedness, and 
causes happiness and peace. It knocks at 
the lonely and disconsolate heart ; and speaks 
words of encouragement and joy. Its all- 
powerful influence hovers o'er contending 
armies, and unites the deadly foes in the 
closest bonds of sympathy and kindness. Its 
eternal and universal fragrance dispels every 



FRIENDSHIP. 1S1 

poisoned thought of envy, and purifies the 
mind with a holy and priceless contentment, 
which all the pomp and power of earth could 
not bestow. In vain do we look for this 
heavenly flower in the cold, calculating world- 
ling ; the poor, deluded wretch is dead to 
every feeling of its ennobling virtue. In vain 
do we look for it in the actions of the proud 
and aristocratic votaries of fashion ; the love 
of self-display, and of the false and fleeting 
pleasures of the world, has banished it forever 
from their hearts. In vain do we look for it in 
the thoughtless and practical throng, who with 
loud laugh, and extended open hands, proclaim 
obedience to its laws — while at the same time 
the canker of malice and envy and detraction 
is enthroned in their hearts, and active on 
their tongues. Friendship, true friendship, 
can only be found to bloom in the soil of a 
noble and self-sacrificing heart ; there it has a 
perennial summer, a never-ending season of 
felicity and joy to its happy possessor, casting 
a thousand rays of love and hope and peace 
to all around. 

A man may have a thousand intimate 
acquaintances, and not a friend among them 



1 8 2 FRIENDSHIP. 

all. If you have one friend, think yourself 
happy. A friend — a real, true-hearted friend 
— is more rare than he should be. Why is 
it that selfishness predominates in the heart ? 
— that he only is considered a friend who has 
money and influence? In the higher walks 
of life, how rarely is a true friend found— one 
who will act as he feels, and speak as he 
thinks. But among the humble and pure, 
you will occasionally find the germ of pure 
friendship. Ye who have found a true friend, 
appreciate his worth. If he labors to benefit 
you, say not a word, perform not an act, that 
will send a thrill of pain to his bosom. If 
there is a crime that betrays a vile heart, it is 
the wounding of pure affection. Many a one 
has seen too late the error of his course. 
When the grave has concealed his best friend, 
he felt — ah ! words will not describe the feel- 
ing. Ye who are surrounded by the kind and 
good — the watchful and true-hearted — appre- 
ciate them, we pray you. Love them in 
return for their kindness, and to the close of 
life they will continue to guard and bless you. 
Never forsake a friend. When enemies gather 
around, when the world is dark and cheerless, 



FRIENDSHIP. 183 

is the time to try a true friend. They who 
turn from a scene of distress betray their 
hypocrisy, and prove that only interest moves 
them. If you have a friend who loves you, 
who has studied your interest and happiness, 
be sure to sustain him in adversity. Let him 
know that his former kindness is appreciated, 
and that his love was not thrown away. Real 
fidelity may be rare, but it exists in the heart. 
They only deny its worth who never loved a 
friend, or labored to make a friend happy. 

Friends that are worth having are not 
made, but "grow," like Topsy in the novel. 
An old man gave this advice to his sons on 
his death-bed, " Never try to make a friend." 
Enemies come fast enough without cultivating 
the crop ; and friends who are brought forward 
by hot-house expedients, are apt to wilt long 
before they are fairly ripened. " Friends 
are discovered rather than made," writes Mrs. 
Stowe. " There are people who are in their 
own nature friends, only they don't know 
each other; but certain things, like poetry, 
music and painting, are like the Freemason's 
sign — they reveal the initiated to each other." 

There is no pre-eminence among true 



1 84 FRIENDSHIP. 

friends ; for whether they are equally accom- 
plished or not, they are equally affected to 
each other. A false friend is like the shadow 
on the sun-dial, appearing in sunshine, but 
vanishing in shade. 

A friend should be one in whose under- 
standing and virtue we can equally confide, 
and whose opinion we can value at once for 
its justness and its sincerity. Relatives are 
not necessarily our best friends, but they 
cannot do us an injury without being enemies 
to themselves. A friend is often more valuable 
than a relative. Go to strangers for charity, 
acquaintances for advice, relatives for nothing. 
A friend of everybody is a friend to nobody. 

When Socrates was asked why he had built 
for himself so small a house, he replied, 
" Small as it is, I wish I could fill it with friends." 
These, indeed, are all that a wise man would 
desire to assemble ; for a crowd is not company, 
and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and 
talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no 
love. Without friends the world would be 
but a wilderness. It has ever been my opin- 
ion, says Horace, that a cheerful, good natured 
friend is so great a blessing, that it admits of 



FRIENDSHIP. 1 8 5 

no comparison but itself. Cicero used to say, 
that it was no less an evil for a man to be 
without a friend, than the heavens to be with- 
out a sun. It is not the seeing of one's 
friends, the having them within reach, the 
hearing of and from them, that makes them 
ours. Many a one has all that, and yet he 
has nothing. It is believing in them, the 
depending on them, assured that they are true 
and good to the core. 

Old friends ! , What a multitude of deep 
and varied emotions are called forth from the 
soul by the utterance of these two words ! 
What thronging memories of other days crowd 
the brain when they are spoken ! Ah, there is 
a magic in the sound, and the spell which it 
creates is both sad and pleasing. As we sit 
by our fireside, while the winds are making 
wild melody without the walls of our cottage, 
and review the scenes of by-gone years which 
flit before us in swift succession, dim and 
shadowy as the recollection of a dream — how 
those " old familiar faces," will rise up and 
haunt our vision with their well remembered 
features. But ah, where are they ? those 
friends of our youth — those kindred spirits 



1 86 FRIENDSHIP. 

who shared our joy and sorrows when first 
we started in the pilgrimage of life. Compan- 
ions of our early days, they are endeared to 
us by many a tie, and we now look back through 
the vista of years, upon the hours of our com- 
munion, as upon green oases in a sandy waste. 
Years have passed over us with their buds 
and flowers, their fruits and snows; and where 
now are those "old familiar faces?" They 
are scattered, and over many of their last 
narrow homes, the thistle waves its lonely 
head; "after life's fitful fever, they sleep well." 
Some are buffeting the billows of Time's 
stormy sea in distant lands ; though they are 
absent our thoughts are often with them. A 
few perhaps yet remain, and we meet them 
oft as we pursue our daily vocation. To those 
we cling with a closer grasp as the auburn of 
their locks fades into grey. They are as a 
cluster of sere leaves in winter which have 
withstood the chill winds of November ; each 
one that drops off binds the others yet closer 
unto us. Time and changes cement our 
friendship, and when an old friend passes off 
the stage, his absence creates a blank which 
new ones can never fill Our life is a devious 



FRIENDSHIP. 187 

path, and as our companions drop off one by 
one, and new faces supply their place, we 
seem to move in a strange world and amid 
strange people. The rocks and the hills, the 
streams and the trees remain in the places 
which they filled of yore, but the " old familiar 
faces " with whom we wandered along their 
banks and beneath their shade, have long since 
departed, and a sensation of loneliness comes 
over us, even when mingling in a crowd. The 
thoughts which fill the mind when musing 
upon the joys of " lang syne " are of a chast- 
ened character. We are freed for a time 
from the shackles of selfishness, and contem- 
plate the purer and kindlier traits of the soul. 
We behold the footprints of Time as marked 
by the pencilings of decay — in the scenes of 
the past We behold a type of the future — the 
fate of our friends shadows forth that of our- 
selves, and dull are we if we rise not from 
fancied communication with old friends, both 
wiser and better men and women. 






XX. 

INFLUENCE. 

N F L U E N C E is the power we exert over 
others by our thoughts, words, and 
actions — by our lives, in short. It is 
a silent, a pervading, a magnetic, and a most 
wonderful thing, It works in inexplicable 
ways. We neither see nor hear it, yet, consci- 
ously or unconsciously, we exert it. No one 
can think, or speak, or act — no one can live — 
without influencing others. We all sometimes 
seem unconscious of this very important fact, 
and appear to have adopted the strange idea 
that what we do, or think, or say, can affect no 
one but ourselves. You influence others and 
mould their characters and destinies for time 
and for eternity far more extensively than 
you imagine. The whole truth in this matter 
might flatter you ; it would certainly astonish 
you if you could once grasp it in its full pro- 
portions. It was a remark of Samuel J. Mills 



INFLUENCE. 1 89 

that " No young man should live in the nine- 
teenth century without making his influence 
felt around the globe." At first thought that 
seems a heavy contract for any young man to 
take. As we come to apprehend more clearly 
the immutable laws of God's moral universe 
we find that this belting of the globe by his 
influence is just what every responsible being 
does — too often, alas, unconsciously. You 
have seen the telephone, that wonderful in- 
strument which so accurately transmits the 
sound of the human voice so many miles. How 
true it is that all these wonderful modern 
inventions are only faint reflections of some 
grand and eternal law of the moral universe of 
God ! God's great telephone — I say it rever- 
ently — is everywhere — filling earth and air and 
sea, and sending round the world with unerring 
accuracy, and for a blessing or a curse, every 
thought of your heart, every word that falls 
thoughtfully or thoughtlessly from your lips, 
and every act you do. It is time you awoke 
to the conviction that, whether you would 
have it so or not, your influence is world-wide 
for good or for evil. Which ? 

There is another immense fact which we 



190 INFLUENCE. 

may as well look squarely in the face. An 
influence never dies. Once born it lives forever. 
In one of his lyrics, Longfellow beautifully 
illustrates this great truth : 

" I shot an arrow in the air, 

It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
***** 

I breathed a song into the air, 

It fell on earth, I knew not where ; 

Long, long afterwards, in an oak 
I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 
And the song, from beginning to end, 
I found again in the heart of a friend." 

No thought, no word, no act of man ever 
dies. They are as immortal as his own soul. 
He will be sure to find them written some- 
where. Somewhere in this world he will meet 
their fruits in part ; somewhere in the future 
life he will meet their gathered harvest. It 
may, and it may not, be a pleasant one to 
look upon. 

An influence not only lives forever, but it 
keeps on growing as long as it lives. There 
never comes a time when it reaches its maturity 
and when its growth is arrested. The influence 
which you start into life to-day in the family, 



INFLUENCE. 191 

the neighborhood, or the social circle, is per- 
haps very small now, very little cared for 
now ; but it will roll forward through the ages, 
growing wider and deeper and stronger with 
every passing hour, and blighting or blessing 
as it rolls. 

" Gather up my influence and bury it with 
me ! " exclaimed a youth, whose unforgiven 
spirit was sinking into the invisible world. Idle 
request ! Had he begged his friends to bind 
the free winds, to chain the wild waves, to 
grasp the fierce lightning, or make a path for 
the sand-blast, his wish would have been more 
feasible. The sceptical thought that fell as a 
seed of evil from the lip and grew in the heart 
of the listener into defiant infidelity, the light 
word that pierced the spirit like a poisoned 
dart, the angry glance which stirred the soul 
to anguish and made tears flow at the midnight 
hour, are all beyond our reach. The mind 
thus wounded sighs on, and after we are dead 
the chords vibrate which our fingers touched. 
The measure of that influence, for weal or 
woe, will lie hidden, a terrible secret, until 
the day when the spirit, blindly driven to 
despair and guilt, or blasted by sceptical 



I 9 2 INFLUENCE. 

thought, shall stand writhing and wretched to 
confront those by whom the offence came, 
and to teach that influence is immutable and 
eternal. It is influence that is thus powerful, 
not the influence of those in high stations. 
The effect of their conduct is more easily- 
traced, because it works through public affairs. 
But the influence of a beggar girl is as potential 
in her sphere as is that of a queen in her more 
enlarged circle. Wealth, station, talent, may 
add to the force and extent of influence, but 
they cannot create it. It is an attribute of 
your nature, inseparable from it, inherent 
in it. 

Your influence is not confined to yourselves, 
or to the scene of your immediate action ; it 
extends to others, and will reach to succeeding 
ages. Future generations will feel the effects 
of your principles and your conduct. You 
are so connected with the immortal beings 
around you, and with those who are to come 
after you, that you cannot avoid exerting 
a most important influence over their char- 
acter and final conditions; and thus, long 
after you shall be no more, nay, long after 
the world itself shall be no more, the conse- 



INFLUENCE. 1 93 

quences of your conduct to thousands of your 
fellow men, will be nothing less than everlast- 
ing destruction, or eternal life. 

What if life is young, and its paths are 
strewed with flowers ? What if the current of 
your ordinary ideas runs in a contrary direc- 
tion ? What if a due sense of the true respon- 
sibilities of life should restrain, in some degree, 
the gayety of your spirits ? Are you, there- 
fore, to trample upon the happiness of others ? 
Are you to peril your own best interests ? 
Remember, as is your influence, so is your 
destiny. There is a woe for those who suffer 
from evil influence ; but a heavier, direr woe 
for them "by whom the offence cometh." 
Consider, therefore, my dear reader, with a 
seriousness worthy of your immortal nature, 
the bearings of this momentous question. 
Resolve, in the silent depths of your reflecting 
spirit, " I will take care of my influence ! " 

Consecrate your influence to virtue, to 
humanity, to God. Thus in your life, you 
shall be " like a star glittering in its own mild 
lustre, undimmed by the radiance of another, 
and uneclipsed by the deep shades of the 
midnight heavens." 
13 



XXI. 




INTEMPERANCE. 

HE bane of the American people is 
intemperance. The high and the 
low alike fall helplessly before it. It 
invades the pulpit, the bar, and the workshop ; 
and many an otherwise happy fireside is turned 
into a sad abode of sorrow by this monstrous 
vice. It may seem incredible, but official 
facts show that more than sixty millions of 
dollars are annually spent in the city of New 
York alone for intoxicating drinks ; while for 
the country at large the official report of the 
Bureau of Statistics shows the appalling sum 
of Five Hundred and Sixty Millions of dollars 
to be spent annually in this frightful way. 
The vigor of our nation is thus being destroy- 
ed ; our alms-houses and prisons are filled ; 
men who might be worthy are turned into 
hardened criminals or wrecks of insanity, 
brutalized in all their tastes and debased 

194 



INTEMPERANCE. i 9 5 

mentally and physically ; homes are desolated, 
and misery and woe stalk abroad where other- 
wise there ought to be thrift and happiness. 

Nor are the wives and mothers of our land 
exempt from the baleful influence of this fear- 
ful vice of intemperance. What so fearful a 
sight as a mother of children debased by rum ? 
What a sad school of vice is that in which to 
rear a family, and how does the polluting in- 
fluence spread to generations yet to come ! 

We are at war with alcohol in every form, 
and under every disguise ; and this war we 
mean shall last while we last. We believe it 
to be the fatal foe to every precious interest 
in life here and hereafter. It destroys prop- 
erty, intellect and life. Why cannot its sad 
victims be made to pause one moment for 
calm reflection upon the certain and sad con- 
sequences of their evil habit ? How can the 
nation be made to see it, and to rouse itself 
and shake off this deadly incubus ? Will 
statistics wake the people? Here they are 
from official data. More than one hundred 
and twenty millions of dollars more are yearly 
spent in the United States for rum than the 
value of<z//the flour, cotton goods, boots and 



1 96 INTEMPERANCE. 

shoes, woolens, clothing, books and news- 
papers — more than the above six principal in- 
dustries per year! You don't believe it? Well, 
it is true, nevertheless. This we know. But 
no pen can portray the deadly list of ills that 
follow in the train of this satanic sin ; of hopes 
blighted ; of intellects debased ; of homes 
ruined ; of hearts broken ; of virtue lost ; of 
children debauched in their young prime ; of 
sorrow, misery and woe here, and heaven 
lost! 

Reader, do you drink ? Stop ! right now ! 
Break that glass at once and forever ! Pause 
and turn your thoughts within for a little calm 
reflection. Are you a drunkard ? Look upon 
that pale and wasted wife and mother, and at 
your sad home, and ask, " Did I cause this 
ruin ? " Are you a moderate drinker ? Remem- 
ber there is death in that cup ! Young man, 
beware of social influences ! Have the cour- 
age to say No ! so will you secure your own 
self-respect and the respect of those who have 
not your courage. 

It is the moral ruin which is caused by rum 
which we wish we had the power to depict in 
all its sulphurous hues. The people would 



INTEMPERANCE. 



197 



stand aghast with fright, and with one accord 
would say, ■" This thing must stop ! " And it 
would stop ; and in its stead we would have a 
nation of sober men ; happy homes, filled with 
love ; happy men, happy wives, happy mothers, 
happy children ! What a leap forward will be 
gained, when virtue shall take the place of vice 
in every human heart; when every aspiration 
should be for something higher and nobler, 
than for something low and vile ? Why not ? 
Sure enough, why not ? 





N the history of most successful men, 
whether in science, art, or trade, it 
will be found that the first real move- 
ment upwards did not take place, until, in a 
spirit of resolute self-denial, indolence, so 
natural to almost every one, was mastered. 
Necessity is, usually, the spur that sets the 
sluggish energies in motion. Poverty, there- 
fore, is oftener a blessing to a young man than 
prosperity ; for, while the one tends to stimulate 
his powers, the other inclines them to languor 
and disuse. But, is it not very discreditable 
for the young man, who is favored with educa- 
tion, friends, and all the outside advantages 
which could be desired as means to worldly 
success, to let those who stand in these 
respects, at the beginning, far below him, 
gradually approach as the steady years move 

198 



INDOLENCE. igg 

on, and finally outstrip him in the race ? It 
is not only discreditable, but disgraceful. A 
man's true position in society, is that which he 
achieves for himself — he is worth to the world 
no more, no less. As he builds for society in 
useful work, so he builds for himself. He is a 
man for what he does, not for what his father 
or his friends have done. If they have done 
well, and given him a position, the deeper the 
shame, if he sink down to a meaner level 
through self-indulgence and indolence. 

Indolence destroys more than industry ; and 
many a drone who has perished prematurely, 
had his friends been equally honest with Sir 
Horace Vere, would have had it said of him, 
as that nobleman said of his brother, when 
the Marquis of Spinola asked, " Pray, Sir 
Horace, of what did your brother die ? " 

"He died of having nothing to do ! " was 
the bluff knight's reply. 

Excellence is providentially placed beyond 
the reach of indolence that success may be the 
reward of industry, and that idleness may be 
punished with obscurity and disgrace. 

A lazy boy makes a lazy man just as sure 
as a crooked sapling makes a crooked tree. 



200 INDOLENCE. 

Think of that, my little lads. Who ever saw 
a boy grow up in idleness that did not make 
a lazy, shiftless vagabond when he was old 
enough to be a man, though he was not a man 
in character, unless he had a fortune left him 
to keep up appearance ? Those who make 
our great and useful men were trained in their 
boyhood to be industrious. 

To a young man who has acquired the habit 
of indulging himself in morning slothfulness, 
it will be something of a trial to rise at five 
o'clock, in both winter and summer; but the 
self-denial practiced in doing this will be so 
fully repaid, in a little while, that we are sure 
no one, who has awakened up to the respon- 
sibility of his position, and the incalculable 
benefits that must result from efforts such as 
he is making, will sink down again into dis- 
graceful indolence. 

Laziness grows on people ; it begins in 
cobwebs and ends in iron chains. The more 
business a man has to do the more he is able 
to accomplish, for he learns to economize his 
time. " I can't find bread for my family," 
said a lazy fellow in company. " Nor I," re- 
plied an industrious miller ; " I am obliged 
to work for it." 



INDOLENCE. 20t 

Activity is the result of some end or affec- 
tion of the mind. Where no purpose is in the 
mind there is indolence ; but when there is an 
end in view of sufficient importance, all the 
powers of the mind come into spontaneous 
activity. Now, will any young man say that 
there are not objects for him to attain, of 
sufficient importance to awaken him from his 
habits of indolence, no matter how much he 
have confirmed himself in them ? We know 
there is not one who does not, at times, feel 
the necessity of concentrating every energy he 
possesses upon the accomplishment of some 
end ; but the evil is, the thoughts are not kept 
steadily fixed upon the end, but are allowed 
to wander off to sport with unimportant things, 
or to retire in mere idle musings ; and thence 
comes indolence ; for if there is no purpose, 
there will be no activity. 

An active and energetic mind may achieve 
much, even where there is great want of 
order ; but indolence chains a man down, and 
keeps him fast in one position ; it is, there- 
fore, the most serious defect of the two, and 
should be striven against with unwearying per- 
severance. 



202 



INDOLENCE. 



Self-complacency begets indolence, a con- 
dition alike disastrous to nations and to in- 
dividuals. Indolence, poverty ; poverty, mis- 
ery. Indolence imparts vice ; vice leads to 
crimes, and crimes to the gallows. 

It is an error to believe that the vehement 
passions alone, like love or ambition, triumph 
over the rest. Indolence, nerveless as it may 
be, is generally master of every other ; it 
steals dominion over every action of life, and 
stealthily paralyzes alike all passions and all 
virtues. 

Indolence leaves the door of the soul un- 
locked, and thieves and robbers go in and 
spoil it of its treasures. 




XXIII. 
INTEGRITY. 



L*F it be admitted that strict integrity is 
not always the shortest way to success, 



ts 



is it not the surest, the happiest, and 
the best ? A young man of thorough integ- 
rity may, it is true, find it difficult, in the 
midst of dishonest competitors and rivals, to 
start in his business or profession ; but how 
long ere he will surmount every difficulty, 
draw around him patrons and friends, and rise 
in the confidence and support of all who know 
him ? 

Look around over your community, and 
see who they are that are most prospered in 
their temporal interests, happiest in their lives, 
and most respected in their characters. Are 
they not the men of firm and decided princi- 
ples, — of fair and open conduct ? There are, 
thank God, many such in the midst of us ; 
many, who know not how to sacrifice their 

203 



204 INTEGRITY. 

conscience to their interest, — many who con- 
duct their affairs with strict probity, with a 
noble, unbending regard to truth and duty. 
Are not these the characters whom you and 
all men most respect and esteem ? Are they 
not in the greatest credit and in the happiest 
condition, sharing largest in the pleasures of 
an approving mind, and in the confidence and 
love of their fellow men ? Let these men be 
your pattern ; tread in their steps, imitate 
their virtues, and rise to their honor and 
happiness. What, if in pursuing this course, 
you should not, at the close of life, have so 
much money by a few hundred dollars ? Will 
not a fair character, an approving conscience, 
and an approving God, be an abundant com- 
pensation for this little deficiency of pelf? 

One of the first effects of integrity is to 
secure to its possessor the confidence of society. 
To have the confidence of others, is to have 
influence over them, for men readily yield 
themselves to the guidance of those in whom 
they confide. Hence, a reputation for lofty 
integrity is a better capital than gold ; — it is 
more persuasive than eloquence ; — it is more 
powerful than the sword. A remarkable ex- 



INTEGRITY. 2 o5 

ample of its influence is furnished in the rivalry 
of Robespierre and Mirabeau, during the first 
epochs of the French Revolution. 

A character for integrity, accuracy, and 
promptness acquired while learning any branch 
of business is the best capital which a young 
man can have. It will make him friends, 
open before him doors of enterprise, and set 
him forward in the world with every facility 
of prosperity and success. I have mentioned 
a character of integrity, by which I mean a 
character of high moral principle ; of unbend- 
ing uprightness and honor ; it is worth every- 
thing to a young man, and he should guard it 
as his richest treasure, even as his life's blood. 
It is indeed his life in all that relates to his 
happiness and success in the world. It is a 
crown of gold to him now, and preserved 
untarnished in the fear and love of God, it is 
a pledge of a crown of glory reserved for him 
in heaven. 

Cultivate the loftiest integrity, even in con- 
nection with the smallest matters. Are you 
a clerk? See to it that your minutest entries 
are strictly correct ; that you never appro- 
priate one cent of your employer's money or 



206 INTEGRITY. 

property to your own uses. Deal with honor- 
able exactness toward all who trade at your 
store or counting-room. Eschew all business 
lies, in selling goods. If, in measuring or 
weighing an article, you discern defects which 
lessen its value, boldly make them known. 
Do not permit a dishonest employer to compel 
you to be his instrument, — his tool for doing 
wrong. Let him distinctly understand that 
you do not hesitate between dishonor and dis- 
missal. Prove, if need be, by the loss of your 
situation, that you prefer an honest crust to a 
dishonest banquet. If you are a mechanic, a 
farmer, or an artist, prosecute your daily tasks 
with the same careful diligence, in the absence, 
as in the presence, of your employer ; thus 
proving that you are " no eye-serva7tt" no 
mere " man-pleas er ? but a conscientious and 
dignified young man ; doing right, not for 
reputation's sake, but because you love it, and 
from a sense of obligation to Almighty God. 





XXIV. 
GENIUS. 

ENIUS is that quality or character of 
the mind which is inventive, or gene- 
rates ; which gives to the world new 
ideas in science, art, literature, morals, or 
religion ; which recognizes no set rules or prin- 
ciples, but is a law unto itself, and rejoices in 
its own originality ; which admitting of a 
direction, never follows the old beaten track, 
but strikes out for a new course ; which has 
no fears of public opinion, nor leans upon pub- 
lic favor — always leads but never follows, 
which admits no truth unless convinced by 
experiment, reflection, or investigation, and 
never bows to the ipse dixit of any man, or 
society, or creed. 

It is one of the mysteries of our life that 
genius, that noblest gift of God to man, is 
nourished by poverty. Its greatest works 
have been achieved by the sorrowing ones of 

207 



208 



GENIUS. 



the world in tears and despair. Not in the 
brilliant saloon, furnished with every comfort 
an'd elegance ; not in the library well fitted, 
softly carpeted, and looking- out upon a smooth, 
green lawn, or a broad expanse of scenery ; not 
in ease and competence — is genius born and 
nurtured ; more frequently in adversity and 
destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a 
straitened household, in bare and fireless gar- 
rets, with the noise of squalid children, in the 
midst of the turbulence of domestic conten- 
tions, and in the deep gloom of uncheered 
despair, is genius born and reared. This is its 
birth-place, and in scenes like these, unpro- 
pitious, repulsive, wretched, have men labored, 
studied and trained themselves, until they have 
at last emanated out of the gloom of that ob- 
scurity the shining lights of their times ; become 
the companions of kings, the guides and teach- 
ers of their kind, and exercise an influence 
upon the thought of the world amounting to a 
species of intellectual legislation. 

Cleverness skims like a swallow in the sum- 
mer evening, with a sharp shrill note, and a 
sudden turning. The man of genius dwells 
with men and with nature ; the man of talent 



GENIUS. 209 

in his study ; but the clever man dances here, 
there and everywhere, like a butterfly in a 
hurricane, striking everything and enjoying 
nothing, but too light to be dashed to pieces. 
The man of talent will attack theories, the 
clever man will assail the individual, and slan- 
der private character. But the man of genius 
despises both ; he heeds none, he fears none ; 
he lives in himself, shrouded in the conscious- 
ness of his own strength; he interferes with 
none, and walks forth an example that " eagles 
fly alone — they are but sheep that herd to- 
gether." It is true, that should a poisonous 
worm cross his path, he may tread it under 
his foot ; should a cur snarl at him, he may 
chastise it ; but he will not, cannot, attack the 
privacy of another. Clever men write verses, 
men of talent write prose y but the man of genius 
writes poetry. 

Genius, says Irving, seems to delight in 
hatching its offspring in by-corners. The house 
where Shakespeare was born was a small, 
mean-looking edifice of wood and plaster, and, 
according to tradition, he was brought up to 
his father's craft of wool-combing. 

Hath God given you genius and learning ? 



210 GENIUS. 

It was not that you might amuse or deck your- 
self with it, and kindle a blaze which should 
only serve to attract and dazzle the eyes of 
men. It was intended to be the means of lead- 
ing both yourself and them to the father of 
lights. 

The drafts which true genius draws upon 
posterity, although they may not always be 
honored as soon as they are due, are sure to 
be paid with compound interest in the end. 

The great and decisive test for genius is, 
that it calls forth power in the souls of others. 
It not merely gives knowledge but breathes 
energy. 






3V 



XXV. 
TACT. 

MAN of tact immediately fills a new 
position with naturalness, and, how- 
ever he himself may feel its embar- 
rassment, he forces the impression upon others, 
that he is just the man for the place. On the 
other hand, without tact, a man is impracti- 
cable. Change his occupation and he acts 
stiffly, awkwardly ; he is like a stiff-jointed 
country recruit at his first drill ; so uncouth 
are his movements, that lookers-on exclaim, 
" He will never do!" His friends lose their 
interest in his advancement. They fear to 
advance him, lest his clownishness should 
mortify their pride, and leave him to pine in 
the obscurity of a lowly position. 

A recent English writer gives the following 
amusing off-handed portraiture of tact and 
talent. The writer recognizes the just distinc- 

211 



212 TACT. 

tion between these two qualities. Tact in its 
highest manifestation we have considered 
only a little short of absolute genius. Talent 
is something, but tact everything. Talent is 
serious, grave and respectable ; tact is all that 
and more. It is not a sixth sense, but the 
life of all the five. It is the open eye, the 
quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, 
and the lively touch ; it is the interpreter of 
all riddles — the surmounter of all difficulties 
— the remover of all obstacles. It is useful 
in all places and at all times; it is useful in 
solitude, for it shows a man his way through 
the w T orld. Talent is power — tact is skill ; 
talent is weight — tact is momentum ; talent 
knows what to do — tact knows how to do 
it ; talent makes a man respectable — tact will 
make a man respected ; talent is wealth — tact 
is ready money. For all practical purposes 
of life, tact carries it against talent — ten to 
one. Talent makes the world wonder that it 
gets on no faster — tact excites astonishment 
that it gets on so fast ; and the secret is that 
it has no weight to carry ; it makes no false 
steps — it hits the right nail on the head — it 
loses no time — it takes all hints — and by 



TACT. 



213 



keeping its eye on the weather-cock, is ready- 
to take advantage of every wind that blows. 
It has the air of common-place, and all the 
force and powers of genius. It can change 
sides with hey-presto movement and be at all 
points of the compass, while talent is ponder- 
ously and learnedly shifting a single point. 
Talent calculates clearly, reasons logically, 
makes out a case as clear as daylight, utters 
its oracles with all the weight of justice and 
reason. Tact refutes without contradicting, 
puzzles the profound without profundity, and 
without wit outwits the wise. Setting them 
together on a race for popularity, pen in 
hand, and tact will distance talent by half the 
course. Talent brings to market that which 
is wanted ; tact produces that which is wished 
for. Talent instructs ; tact enlightens. Tal- 
ent leads where no man follows ; tact follows 
where humor leads. Talent is pleased that it 
ought to have succeeded ; tact is delighted 
that it has succeeded. Talent toils for a 
posterity that will never repay it ; tact throws 
away no pains, but catches the passion of the 
passing hour. Talent builds for eternity, tact 
on short lease, and gets good interest. Talent 



214 TACT. 

is certainly a very fine thing to talk about, a 
very good thing to be proud of, a very glori- 
ous eminence to look down from ; but tact is 
useful, portable, applicable, always market- 
able ; it is the talent of talents, the available- 
ness of resources, the applicability of power, 
the eye of discrimination, the right hand of 
intellect. 

But tact is the gift of nature ! Yes ! to some 
extent it is so. Versatility is easier to some 
than to others. That is, it requires less effort 
in some than in others, to adapt themselves 
to new relations to society. But even the 
versatility of the proudest sons of genius is the 
offspring of self-culture. The man who shines 
in an exalted position, who appears in it at 
such perfect ease that one might infer he was 
born to fill it, has gained the confidence which 
inspires him with ease by previous self-culti- 
vation. A man who is true to himself is 
always in advance of his actual position ; 
hence, when called to higher posts, he moves 
into them and fills them with propriety and 
dignity. This is tact. And the mental train- 
ing which creates tact is within the reach of 
every young man. 




XXVL 
ECONOM K 

CONOMY is a trite and forbidding 
theme. The young man will feel 
tempted to pass it by, and proceed to 
the next chapter. But we beseech him to 
read on, since his social advancement depends 
in a good degree upon his frugality. He had 
better be doomed, like the sons of ancient 
Jacob in Egypt, to make bricks without straw, 
than to enter the scenes of active life without 
economy for a companion. 

The habit of spending money too freely in 
the gratification of a host of imaginary wants, 
is one into which young men of generous 
minds are too apt to fall. Limited to a small 
income previously, and compelled to deny 
themselves at nearly every point, they find it 
almost impossible to resist the impulse that 
prompts to self-gratification, and are thus led to 

215 



2l6 



ECONOMY. 



spend, perhaps for years, the entire sum of 
their earnings, and, more than probable, to 
run into debt. The folly of this every one can 
see and acknowledge, and yet too many have 
not the resolution to act up to their con- 
victions, y 

This habit of spending money uselessly has 
marred the fortunes of more young men than 
any other cause. It is a weakness that should 
be firmly and constantly resisted by every one. 
Money should be considered as a means by 
which man has power to act usefully in the 
world, and he ought to endeavor to obtain it 
with that end in view. The greater a man's 
wealth, the broader may be, if he but will it, 
the sphere of his usefulness. 

Every man ought so to contrive as to live 
within his means. This practice is of the very 
essence of honesty. For if a man do not man- 
age honestly to live within his own means, he 
must necessarily be living dishonestly upon the 
means of somebody else. Those who are 
careless about personal expenditure, and con- 
sider merely their own gratification, without 
regard for the comfort of others, generally find 
out the real uses of money when it is too late. 



ECONOMY. 217 

It is wiser and more honorable for a man 
to wear his coat three or six months longer, 
until he have the money with which to buy a 
new one, than it is to go in debt for the gar- 
ment, and thus lay a tax upon his future 
income, or run the risk of not being able to 
pay for what he has worn, at the time agreed 
upon. 

On every hand we see people living upon 
credit, putting off pay day till the last, making 
in the end some desperate effort, either by 
begging or borrowing, to scrape the money 
together, and then struggling on again, with 
the canker of care eating at their heart, to the 
inevitable goal of bankruptcy. If people 
would only make a push at the beginning, 
instead of the end, they would save themselves 
all this misery. The great secret of being 
solvent, and well-to-do, and comfortable, is to 
get ahead of your expenses. Eat and drink 
this month what you earned last month — not 
what you are going to earn next month. 
There are, no doubt, many persons so unfortu- 
nately situated that they can never accomplish 
this. No man can to a certainty guard against 
ill health ; no man can insure himself a well- 



21 8 ECONOMY. 

conducted, helpful family, or a permanent 
income. There will always be people who 
cannot help their misfortunes ; but, as a rule, 
these unfortunates are far less trouble to 
society than those in a better position who 
bring their misfortunes upon themselves by 
deliberate recklessness and extravagances. 
You may help a poor, honest, struggling man 
to some purpose, but the utmost you can do 
for an unthrift is thrown away. You give 
him money you have earned by hard labor — 
he spends it in pleasure, which you have 
never permitted yourself to enjoy. Some 
people use one-half their ingenuity to get into 
debt, and the other half to avoid paying it. 
An old merchant gives this sound advice : 
" Never owe any more than you are able to 
pay, and allow no man to owe you any more 
than you are able to lose." 

Credit never permits a man to know the 
real value of money, nor to have full con- 
trol over his affairs. It presents all his ex- 
penses in the aggregate, and not in detail. 
Every one has more or less of the miser's 
love of money — of the actual gold pieces 
and the crisp bank notes. Now, if you have 



ECONOMY. 



219 



these things in your pocket, you see them, 
as you make your purchases, visibly dimin- 
ishing under your eye. The lessening heap 
cries to you to stop. You would like to 
buy this, that, and the other ; but you know- 
exactly how much money you have left, and 
if you go on buying more things, your purse 
will soon be empty. You do not see this 
when you take credit. You give your orders 
freely, without thought or calculation ; and 
when the day of, payment comes, you find 
that you have overrun the constable. 

Simple industry and thrift will go far toward 
making any person of ordinary working 
faculty comparatively independent in means. 
Even a working man may be so, provided he 
will carefully husband his resources, and 
watch the little outlets of useless expenditure. 
A penny is a very small matter, yet the com- 
fort of thousands of families depends upon the 
proper spending and saving of pennies. 

Mr. Spurgeon tells the following story of 
his early life : " When I was a very small boy, 
in pinafores, and went to a woman's school, 
it so happened that I wanted a slate-pencil, 
and had no money to buy it with. I was 



220 



ECONOMY. 






afraid of being scolded for losing my pencils 
so often, for I was a careless little fellow, and 
so did not care to ask at home ; what, then, 
was I to do ? There was a little shop in the 
place, where nuts, tops, cakes, and balls, were 
sold by old Mrs. Dearson ; and sometimes I 
had seen boys and girls get trusted by the old 
lady. I argued with myself that Christmas 
was coming, and that somebody or other 
would be sure to give me a penny then, and 
perhaps even a whole silver sixpence. I 
would, therefore, go into debt for a slate- 
pencil, and be sure to pay at Christmas. I 
did not feel easy about it, but still I screwed 
my courage up, and went into the shop. One 
farthing was the amount ; and as I had never 
owed anything before, my credit was good, 
the pencil was handed over by the kind dame, 
and I was in debt. It did not please me 
much, and I felt as if I had done wrong ; but I 
little knew how soon I should smart for it. 
How my father came to hear of this little 
stroke of business I never knew, but some 
little bird or other whistled it to him, and he 
was very soon down upon me in right earnest. 
God bless him for it ; he was a sensible man, 



ECONOMY. 22 1 

and none of your children-spoilers ; he did 
not intend to bring up his children to speculate, 
and play at what big rogues call financiering, 
and he therefore knocked my getting into 
debt on the head at once, and no mistake. 
He gave me a very powerful lecture upon 
getting into debt, and how like it was to 
stealing, and upon the way in which people 
were ruined by it ; and how a boy who would 
owe a farthing might one day owe a hundred 
pounds, and get into prison, and bring his 
family to disgrace. It was a lecture, indeed ; 
I think I can hear it now, and feel my ears 
tingling at the recollection of it. Then I 
marched off to the shop, like a deserter 
marched into barracks, crying bitterly all down 
the street, and feeling dreadfully ashamed, 
because I thought everybody knew that I was 
in debt. The farthing was paid amid many 
solemn warnings, and the poor debtor was set 
free, like a bird out of a cage. How sweet it 
felt to be out of debt ! How did my little 
heart vow and declare that nothing should 
tempt me into debt again! It was a fine 
lesson, and I have never forgotten it." 

The loose cash which many persons throw 



222 ECONOMY. 

away uselessly, and worse, would often form 
a basis of fortune and independence for life. 
These wasters are their own worst enemies, 
though generally found amongst the ranks of 
those who rail at the injustice of "the world." 
But if a man will not be his own friend, how 
can he expect that others will ? Orderly men 
of moderate means have always something 
left in their pockets to help others ; whereas 
your prodigal and careless fellows who spend 
all, never find an opportunity for helping any- 
body. It is poor economy, however, to be a 
scrub. Narrow-mindedness in living and in 
dealing is generally short-sighted, and leads 
to failure. The penny soul, it is said, never 
came to two-pence. Generosity and liberality, 
like honesty, prove the best policy after all. 




XXVII. 




INDUSTRY. 

AN was made for action, — for duty and 
usefulness ; and it is only when he 
lives in accordance with this great 
design of his being, that he attains his highest 
dignity and truest happiness. To make 
pleasure our ultimate aim is certainly to fail 
of it. 

No matter what a young man's situation 
and prospects are ; no matter if he is perfectly 
independent in his circumstances, and heir to 
millions ; he will certainly become a worth- 
less character, if he does not aim at something 
higher than his own selfish enjoyment ; if he 
does not indeed devote himself to some honor- 
able and useful calling. 

I will add that so far as the formation of a 
good character and success in the world are 
concerned, I would rather have a child of 
mine begin life, with nothing to rely upon 

223 



224 INDUSTRY. 

but his own exertions, than be heir to the richest 
estate in the country. Character and success 
depend vastly more on personal effort, than 
on any external advantages. With such ef- 
fort, the humblest cannot fail to rise ; with- 
out such effort, the highest cannot fail to 
sink. 

A life of idleness is one of the direst of all 
curses. The doctrine that labor, even of the 
humblest character, is dishonorable, he must 
resolutely trample in the dust, as false and 
dangerous ; and contend that an industrious, 
honest scavenger is really a more honorable 
man than the most fashionable dandy, who 
idles away his time on the pavements of Broad- 
way, in ladies' drawing-rooms, in cafes, and in 
theatres. Thus, eschewing false ideas, and 
making every moment fruitful of some good 
to mind or body, to himself or to others, he 
cannot fail of a plenteous harvest of advan- 
tages as life advances. 

Nothing great is ever achieved, except by 
industry and earnest application, combined 
with an orderly arrangement of all the means 
necessary to the accomplishment of the object 
in view. From this may be clearly seen the 



INDUSTRY. 225 

importance of habits of industry and order. 
Without them, little can be done ; with them, 
almost everything. 

To be industrious, a young man must have 
a useful pursuit and a worthy aim. He must 
follow that pursuit diligently. Rising early 
and economizing his moments, he must earn- 
estly persist in his toil, adding little by little 
to his capital stock of ideas, influence or 
wealth. He must learn to glory in his labor, 
be it mechanical, agricultural, or professional. 
He must impress himself deeply with the idea 
that a life of idleness is one of the direst of 
all curses. 

Vast numbers of young men annually sink 
from positions of high promise into utter 
abandonment and destruction. .But admit 
that the idle youth so trims between sloth and 
industry as to avoid utter ruin, — what then ? 
He lives a useless, insignificant life. His 
place in society is aptly illustrated by certain 
books in a Boston library, which are lettered 
" Succedaneum " on their backs. " Succeda- 
neum ! " exclaims the visitor ; " what sort of 
a book is that ? " Down it comes ; when lo ! 
a wooden block, shaped just like a book, is 
i5 



226 INDUSTRY, 

in his hands. Then he understands the mean- 
ing of the occult title to be, " In the place 
of another ; " and that the wooden book is used 
to fill vacant places, and keep genuine volumes 
from falling into confusion. Such is an idler 
in society. A man in form, but a block in 
fact. 

As nothing great can be accomplished with- 
out industry and an earnest purpose, so noth- 
ing great can be accomplished without order. 
The one is indispensable to the other, and 
they go hand in hand, as co-workers, in man's 
elevation. 

No young man should wish to live without 
work ; work is a blessing instead of a curse ; 
it makes men healthy, develops their powers 
of body and mind ; frees them from tempta- 
tion, makes them virtuous and enterprising, 
and raises them to wealth, to honor, and to 
happiness. The working men of our country 
are its truest nobility. I refer of course both 
to those who work with their minds, and those 
who work with their hands ; and with these 
workers every young man should be prompt to 
enroll his name, and honor it, through life, by 
being a working man, — a producer, and not 



INDUSTRY. 227 

a mere consumer of what others earn. Hav- 
ing chosen his occupation, let him give him- 
self to it with patient, untiring application — 
resolve to rise and to excel in it. If placed 
in discouraging circumstances, let him remem- 
ber the adage of Cicero, — Diligentia omnia 
vincit. Many a dark morning has been suc- 
ceeded by a long bright day. Our worthiest 
and best men have been formed amid difficul- 
ties and trials, and no young man should ever 
succumb to difficulties, or shrink from toil. 
Rightly met and borne they will give strength 
and firmness to his character, and so contrib- 
ute to his higher and better success in life. 

Martin Luther, Richard Baxter, John 
Wesley, Adam Clarke, Richard Watson, 
Napoleon Bonaparte, Elihu Burritt, and a 
host beside, might be quoted as demonstrations 
of what may be done by an industrious 
employment of moments during a life-time. 
But what does it avail to multiply examples ? 
Let the young man resolve to become an ex- 
ample himself. Determine to make the most 
of your opportunities, and henceforth act on 
the principle that moments are grains of 
gold, by the careful gathering of which you 



228 INDUSTRY. 

are to become rich in knowledge, in experi- 
ence, in honor, and in happiness. 

I have seen young men starting from the 
humblest walks and rising to honor, wealth, 
and influence in the various callings in life. 
I have seen others, much their superiors in 
natural talents and external advantages, sink 
into inefficiency and neglect, unable to acquire 
any eminence or respect in the world. And 
when I have inquired for the cause of this 
difference, I have found almost universally 
that it was owing to diligence and persever- 
ance in one case, and to negligence and incon- 
stancy in the other. I have rarely known a 
young man fail to rise in the world who pur- 
sued an honest calling with a steady, unwaver- 
ing purpose to excel in it ; and I have never 
known one fail to sink who was of a slothful, 
unstable character. Industry and persever- 
ance, coupled with fidelity, can do anything, 
but without them nothing can be done. Like 
the tortoise in the fable, it is the slow, sure, 
perservering runner that first reaches the 
goal. It is not a few bold, fitful efforts that 
makes a man of mark. Even the great New- 
ton modestly confessed that he owed his sue- 



INDUSTRY. 229 

cess as a philosopher more to patience and 
attention than to any original superiority of 
mind. And we know of many at the present 
day among the most useful and respected in 
society, who have risen precisely in the same 
manner. 

Idleness is the nursery of crime. It is that 
prolific germ of which all rank and poisonous 
vices are the fruits. It is the source of temp- 
tation. It is the field where " the enemy 
sows tares while men sleep." Could we trace 
the history of a large class of vices, we should 
find that they generally originate from the 
want of some useful employment, and are 
brought in to supply its place. 






XXVIII. 
SELF-CULTURE. 

HE secret of moral self-culture lies in 
training the will to decide according 
to the fiat of an enlightened con- 
science. When a question of good or ill is 
brought before the mind for its action, its 
several faculties are appealed to. The intel- 
lect perceives, compares, and reflects on the 
suggestions. The emotions, desires and pas- 
sions, are addressed, and solicited to indul- 
gence. The conscience pronounces its verdict 
of right or wrong on the proposed act. Then 
comes the self-determining will, coinciding 
either with the conscience or the emotions. 
The end of right moral culture is to habituate 
it to decide against the passions, desires and 
emotions, whenever they oppose the conscience. 
Set a high price on your leisure moments. 
They are sands of precious gold. Properly 

230 



SELF-CULTURE. 



231 



expended, they will procure for you a stock 
of great thoughts, — thoughts that will fill, stir, 
invigorate, and expand your soul. 

In rightly improving this time, every one 
who is earnestly seeking to unfold the native 
energies of his mind by giving it the food 
which God designed that it should receive, 
will soon discover, that, after a night's repose, 
his mind is clearer and more vigorous than 
after a day spent in labor, and, perhaps, anx- 
iety ; and he will naturally seek to give as 
much time for study in the morning as possi- 
ble. Early rising will bring to him a two- 
fold benefit ; it will strengthen both mind and 
body. 

Self-education is something very different 
from mere reading by way of amusement. It 
requires prolonged and laborious study. The 
cultivation of a taste for reading is all very 
well ; but mere reading does little toward 
advancing any one in the world — little toward 
preparing him for 2 higher station than the 
one he fills. The knowledge which fits a man 
for eminence in any profession or calling, is 
not acquired without patient, long-continued, 
and earnest application. 



232 SELF-CULTURE. 

Mere reading, therefore, although of impor- 
tance in itself, as a means of enlarging our 
ideas and correcting and refining our tastes, 
does not give a man much power — does not 
help him to rise above the position in which 
circumstances may have originally placed 
him. It is study that does this. Franklin 
the printers boy did not become Franklin 
the philosopher and statesman, by reading 
only, but by study ; and we do not hear of 
his studying under teachers, and of being 
guided by them — for, like many of us, he did 
not possess these high advantages, — but his 
education progressed under the supervision 
of his own mind. He had to feel his way 
along, and to correct his own errors, ever and 
anon, as the dawning of fresh light enabled 
him to see them. And you may do the same ; 
you, with few acquirements now, and few 
opportunities, may, if you only will it, become 
as useful and eminent a man as Franklin. 
But you must work for it. Diligently and 
earnestly must you labor, or you cannot stand 
side by side, in after years, with the men who 
have become distinguished for the important 
services they have been able to render their 
fellows. 



SELF-CULTURE. 233 

But usually young men are not willing to 
devote themselves to that process of slow, 
toilsome self-culture, which is the price of 
great success. Could they soar to eminence 
on the lazy wings of genius, the world would 
be filled with great men. But this can never 
be ; for, whatever aptitude for particular pur- 
suits Nature may donate to her favorite chil- 
dren, she conducts none but the laborious and 
the studious to distinction. 

The great thoughts of great men are now 
to be procured at prices almost nominal. 
Therefore, you can easily collect a library of 
choice authors. Public lectures are also abun- 
dant in our large cities. Attend the best of 
them, and carefully treasure up their richest 
ideas. But, above all, learn to reflect even 
more than you read. Reading is to the mind 
what eating is to the body; and reflection is 
similar to digestion. To eat, without giving 
nature time to assimilate the food to herself 
by the slower process of digestion, is to de- 
prive her, first, of health, and then, of life ; so, 
to cram the intellect by reading, without due 
reflection, is to weaken and paralyze the mind. 
He who reads thus has " his perceptions daz- 



234 



SELF-CULTURE. 



zled and confused by the multitude of images 
presented to them." 

There are a very large number of young 
men, just entering upon life, of good minds, 
but deficient education, who from this cause, 
are kept back, and labor under great disabili- 
ties. Many of these are mechanics, and 
others have no regular calling whatever, and 
find it very difficult to earn anything beyond 
a very meagre support. Upon these we would 
urge, with great earnestness, the duty of self- 
education, so called. The deficiencies of early 
years need not keep them back from posi- 
tions of eminence in society — those positions 
awarded only to men of intellectual force and 
sound information — if they will but strive for 
them. A vast amount of knowledge may be 
gained in the course of a very few years, by 
rightly employing those leisure hours which 
every one has ; and this knowledge, if of a 
practical kind, will always insure to a man the 
means of elevation in the world. 





XXIX. 
CHARACTER. 

HERE is a difference between charac- 
ter and reputation. Character is what 
we really are. Reputation is what 
others suppose we are. A man may have a 
good character and a bad reputation, or he 
may have a good reputation and a bad charac- 
ter. The reason of this is, that we form our 
opinions of men from what they appear to be, 
and not from what they really are. Some 
men appear to be much better than they 
really are, while others are better than 
they appear to be. Most men are more 
anxious about their reputation than they are 
about their character. This is improper. 
While every man should endeavor to main- 
tain a good reputation, he should especial- 
ly labor to possess a good character. Our 
true happiness depends not so much on what 
is thought of us by others, as on what we 

235 



236 CHARACTER. 

really are in ourselves. Men of good charac- 
ter are generally men of good reputation ; but 
this is not always the case, as the motives and 
actions of the best men are sometimes mis- 
understood and misrepresented. But it is 
important, above everything else, that we 
be right, and do right, whether our motives 
and actions are properly understood and 
appreciated or not. Nothing can be so im- 
portant to any man as the formation and 
possession of a good character. 

The influences which operate in the forma- 
tion of character are numerous, and however 
trivial some of them may appear, they are 
not to be despised. The most powerful forces 
in nature are those which operate silently and 
imperceptibly. This is equally true of those 
moral forces which exert the greatest influences 
on our minds, and give complexion to our 
character. Among these, early impressions, 
example, and habits, are perhaps the most 
powerful. 

Early impressions, although they may ap- 
pear to be but slight, are the most enduring, 
and exert the greatest influences on the life. 
By repetition they acquire strength, become 



CHARACTER. 237 

deeply rooted in the mind, and give bent and 
inclination to its powers. " The tiniest bits of 
opinion sown in the minds of children in 
private life, afterwards issue forth to the 
world, and become its public opinion ; for 
nations are gathered out of nurseries." Ex- 
amples, it is said, preach to eyes ; and there 
are but few persons, especially among the 
young, who can avoid imitating those with 
whom they associate. For the most part, 
this is so unconscious that its effects are 
almost unheeded, but its influence is not 
on that account the less permanent. The 
models which are daily placed before us, tend 
to mould our character and shape our course 
in life. Habit results from the repetition of 
the same act, until we become so accustomed 
to it, that its performance requires no mental 
effort, and scarcely attracts our attention. 

By the influence of early impressions, the 
force of example, and the power of habit, the 
character becomes slowly and imperceptibly, 
but at length decidedly formed ; the individual 
acquires those traits and qualities by which he 
is distinguished, and which bear directly upon 
his happiness and welfare. It is very impor- 



238 CHARACTER. 

tant, then, for every one, and especially for 
the young, to be very careful as to the im- 
pressions he cherishes, the example he imitates, 
and the habits he forms. These are import- 
ant elements which go to constitute character, 
and if they are of an improper nature, the 
result will be ruinous. Character is every- 
thing. It matters not what a man's reputation 
may be, without a good character he cannot 
be happy. 

In the formation of a good character, it is 
of great importance that the early part of life 
be improved and guarded with the utmost dili- 
gence and carefulness. The most critical 
period of life is that which elapses from four- 
teen to twenty-one years of age. More is 
done during this period, to mould and settle 
the character of the future man than in all the 
other years of life. If a young man passes this 
season with pure morals and a fair reputation, 
a good name is almost sure to crown his 
maturer years, and descend with him to the 
close of his days. On the other hand, if a 
young man, in this spring season of life, 
neglects his mind and heart ; if he indulges 
himself in vicious courses, and forms habits of 



CHARACTER. 239 

inefficiency and slothfulness, he experiences 
a loss which no efforts can retrieve, and brings 
a stain upon his character which no tears 
can wash away. 

"A fair reputation, it should be remem- 
bered, is a plant, delicate in its nature, and by 
no means rapid in its growth. It will not 
shoot up in a night, like the gourd that shaded 
the prophet's head ; but like that same gourd, 
it may perish in a night." A character which 
it has cost many years to establish, is often 
destroyed in a single hour, or even minute. 
Guard, then, with peculiar vigilance, this 
forming, fixing season of your existence ; and 
let the precious days and hours that are now 
passing by you, be diligently occupied in 
acquiring those habits of intelligence, of virtue 
and enterprise, which are so essential to the 
honor and success of future life. 

To the formation of a good character, it is 
of the highest importance that you have a com- 
manding object in view, and that your aim in life 
be elevated. To this cause, perhaps, more than 
to any other, is to be ascribed the great differ- 
ence which appears in the characters of men. 
Some start in life with an object in view, and 



240 CHARACTER. 

are determined to attain it ; whilst others live 
without plan, and reach not for the prize set 
before them. The energies of one are called 
into vigorous action, and they rise to eminence, 
whilst the others are left to slumber in ignoble 
ease, and sink into obscurity. 

The happiness of all with whom you are 
or shall be connected in life, is deeply involved 
in the characters you are now forming. Those 
kind parents who watched over your infancy 
and childhood, and who are looking to you 
as the props of their declining age ; those 
brothers and sisters, who are allied to you by 
ties of the tenderest affection ; all your dear 
relatives and friends, regard, with deep and 
anxious solicitude, the course upon which you 
are entering, and the habits which are to 
stamp the character and fix the destiny of your 
future life. In no way can you contribute 
so much to the happiness of all who esteem 
and love you, as by sustaining a good character ; 
and in no way pierce their hearts with keener 
sorrow, than by compelling them to behold 
you sacrificing a fair reputation, and all your 
prospects for life, in unworthy and vicious 
indulgences. 



CHARACTER. 24 1 

Another thing demanded of you by society 
is an upright and virtuous character. If a 
young man is loose in his principles and habits ; 
if he lives without plan and without object, 
spending his time in idleness and pleasure, 
there is more hope of a fool than of him. 
He is sure to become a worthless character, 
and a pernicious member of society. He 
forgets his high destination as a rational, 
immortal being ; he degrades himself to a 
level with the brute ; and is not only disquali- 
fied for all the serious duties of life, but proves 
himself a nuisance and a curse to all with 
whom he is connected. 

No young man can hope to rise in society, 
or act worthily his part in life, without a fair 
moral character. The basis of such a character 
is virtuous principle ; or a deep, fixed sense 
of moral obligation, sustained and invigorated 
by the fear and love of God. The man who 
possesses such a character can be trusted. 
Integrity, truth, benevolence, justice, are not 
with him words without meaning ; he knows 
and he feels their sacred import, and aims, in 
the whole tenor of his life, to exemplify the 
virtues they express. Such a man has decision 
16 



242 CHARACTER. 

of character ; — he knows what is right, and is 
firm in doing it. Such a man has independ- 
ence of character ; — he thinks and acts for 
himself, and is not to be made a tool of to 
serve the purposes of party. Such a man 
has consistency of character ; — he pursues a 
straightforward course, and what he is to-day 
you are sure of finding him to-morrow. Such 
a man has true worth of character ; — and his 
life is a blessing to himself, to his family, to 
society, and to the world. 

We contend that no man can rationally 
hope to pass the ordeals of life in safety, 
unless his outward virtues derive vitality and 
vigor from an inward religious life. To be 
perennial, the stream must proceed from a 
living spring ; to be fruitful, the tree must 
spread its roots in a congenial soil ; so, to 
insure the possession of uprightness through 
the manifold trials of human life, the soul of 
a man must be in harmony with its Creator, — 
through faith in Him, it must derive strength 
to resist wrong, to desire and to will right, 
when standing in the plunging torrent of evil 
influences which is ever dashing down the 
highways of trade. Greatly good men are 



CHARACTER. 



243 



always "like solitary towers in the city of 
God ; and secret passages, running deep 
beneath external nature, give their thoughts 
intercourse with higher intelligences, which 
strengthens and controls them." 

Recollect your high destination, as rational 
and immortal beings, and remember, that 
your all, both for this and the future world, 
depends on the manner in which you form 
your character. If, during the few years in 
which your characters are forming, you shun 
the paths of vice, and carefully cultivate 
habits of virtue, intelligence, and good con- 
duct, you cannot fail to rise to respectability, 
and usefulness, and happiness. You will have 
the sweet approbation of your own minds 
to cheer and animate you ; friends will rise up 
to patronize and encourage you, Providence 
will smile upon your efforts and ways ; and 
your life, crowned with the blessings of God 
and the gratitude of your fellow men, will 
decline in peace, and give a fair promise of a 
bright rising in another world. 




1 




XXX. 

VICE. 

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 

As to be hated needs but to be seen ; 

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 

We first endure, then pity, then embrace. — Pope. 



EN, for the most part, are but little 
aware of the danger which attends 
the beginnings of evil. They readily 
perceive the degrading and destructive ten- 
dency of the grosser vices ; but they are slow 
of heart to believe that there are certain 
dispositions and habits which inevitably lead 
to those vices and their consequent degrada- 
tion and ruin. While they are careful to shun 
the more open and flagrant offences, they are 
not afraid to venture upon what are deemed 
little sins, — upon slight deviations from duty, 
— occasional indulgence of the appetites and 
passions. 

244 



VICE. 245 

No young man becomes suddenly abandoned 
and profligate. There is always a gradual 
progress. He begins in slight, occasional 
departures from rectitude, and goes on from 
one degree of guilt to another, till conscience 
becomes seared, the vicious propensity strong, 
the habit of indulgence fixed, and the character 
ruined. 

Take for example, a young man, who 
occasionally drinks to excess in the social 
circle ; he does not dream that he is entering 
upon a course which will probably end in 
confirmed intemperance. He means no harm ; 
he says of sin, is it not a little one ; there can 
be no danger in this. But soon his bands are 
made strong, and he becomes the slave of a 
sottish vice. 

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses 
to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to 
attach names of contempt to certain virtues ; 
and to fill weak souls with a foolish fear of 
passing for scrupulous, should they desire to 
put them in practice. Sometimes those boast 
of abstinence who have lost their digestive 
power ; those boast of chastity whose blood 
is cold and stagnant ; those boast of knowing 



246 VICE. 

how to be silent who have nothing to say. 
In short, mankind make vices of the pleasures 
which they cannot enjoy, and virtues of the 
infirmities to which they are subject. We 
sometimes clap vice in fetters and then call it 
virtue. Some men are kind because they are 
dull, as common horses are easily broken to 
harness. Some are orderly because they are 
timid, like cattle driven by a boy with a wand. 
And some are social because they are greedy, 
like barn-yard fowls that mind each other's 
clucking. Many persons think themselves 
perfectly virtuous because, being well fed, 
they have no temptation to vice. They don't 
distinguish between virtue and victuals. 

Vice is like the terrible cobra di capello 
which winds itself round its victim, and from 
its deadly fangs pours poison into his blood. 
So vice enslaves and destroys. Whoever is 
charmed to its embraces, finds himself enfolded 
in bonds of might, and poisoned with a morbid 
venom which irritates and stimulates his pas- 
sions beyond the endurance of his vital powers ; 
until, with a diseased body, a hardened heart, 
and a remorseful spirit, he sinks to an untimely 
death, and is driven to stand, shivering with 
fear, before his God ! 



VICE. 247 

On the other hand, the man who seriously 
considers the nature and design of his being ; 
who shuns the society and flees the amuse- 
ments of the thoughtless and the vicious ; 
who devotes his vacant hours to the improve- 
ment of his mind and heart, and aims at the 
acquisition of those habits and virtues which 
may qualify him for the duties of life, — cannot 
fail to rise in respectability, in influence and 
honor. 

His virtues and attainments make room for 
him in society, and draw around him the con- 
fidence and respect, the affection and support, 
of all worthy and good men. 

Never open a door to a little vice, lest a 
great one should enter also. Small faults 
indulged are little thieves that let in greater. 
Many a man's vices have at first been nothing 
worse than good qualities run wild. Vice, 
abstractly considered, is often engendered in 
idleness, but, the moment it becomes efficient- 
ly vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be 
idle. Vice lives and thrives by concealment. 
Why does no man confess his vices ? It is 
because he is yet in them. It is for a waking 
man to tell his dreams. Human frailty is no 



248 VICE. 

excuse for criminal immorality. We may 
hate men's vices without any ill-will to their 
persons ; but we cannot help despising those 
that have no kind of virtue to recommend 
them. 

The plea of every young mind that enters 
upon its novitiate in the school of vice is for 
only a little self-indulgence. The mind, while 
undefiled by positive contact with the sins of 
the senses, revolts from the idea of a wholly 
vicious life. It views such a life as the dogs 
of Egypt are said to fear the crocodiles which 
abound in the Nile. So intense is this fear, 
that, when impelled by fierce thirst to drink 
its waters, they do it as they run, not daring 
to pause long enough at once to satisfy their 
burning desires. Thus does the young man 
propose to taste illicit joys. He would only 
taste and flee, lest he should be devoured ! 
Alas ! he knows not the terrible power he 
awakens, when he quaffs his first draught from 
the prohibited stream of pleasure ! By that 
one act, he casts away the talisman of his 
safety, self-denial ; he removes the curb from 
the mouth of lust, he pours foul water upon 
the virgin snow, and thus places an inefface- 



VICE. 249 

able stain upon his purity, he contracts guilt, 
sows the seed of remorse, and sells his moral 
freedom for naught. A little indulgence ? 
Never, young man ! Allow it, and you are 
lost ; blindness begins where vice first en- 
chants. Beware, oh beware of this pestilential 
apology ! Be like the knights of Tasso, who, 
on Armida's enchanted isle, seeing all the 
enticements of sense voluptuously prepared 
and inviting to indulgence, exclaimed : 

" Let us avoid the dream 
Of warm desire, and in resolve be strong ; 
Now shut our ears to the fair Siren's song, 
And to each smile of feminine deceit 
Close the fond eye." 





XXXI. 
POVERTY. 

MAN should not be despised because 
he is poor. Even to slight the poor 
is mean. To be poor is more honor- 
able than to be dishonorably rich. Pious 
poverty is better than poor piety. Poverty 
breeds wealth ; and. wealth, in its turn, breeds 
poverty. The earth, to form the mound, is 
taken out of the ditch ; and the height of one 
is near about the depth of the other. Wealth 
and poverty are both temptations : that, tends 
to excite pride ; this, discontent. The priva- 
tions of poverty render us too cold and callous, 
and the privileges of property too cold and 
consequential ; the first place us beneath the 
influence of opinion — the second above it. 
Poverty induces and cherishes dependence, 
and dependence strengthens and increases 
corruption. Whoever is not contented in 

250 






POVERTY. 



251 



poverty, would not be perfectly happy with 
riches. Bulwer says that poverty is only an 
idea in nine cases out of ten. Some men with 
ten thousand dollars a year suffer more for 
want of means than others with three hundred. 
The reason is, the richer man has artificial 
wants. His income is ten thousand, and, by 
habit, he spends twelve or fifteen thousand, 
and he suffers enough from being dunned for 
unpaid debts to kill a sensitive man. A man 
who earns a dollar a day, and does not run in 
debt, is the happier of the two. Very few 
people who have never been rich will believe 
this ; but it is as true as God's word. There 
are people, of course, who are wealthy and 
enjoy their wealth, but there are thousands 
upon thousands with princely incomes who 
never know a moment's peace, because they 
live above their means. There is really more 
happiness in the world among the working 
people than among those who are called rich. 
It is contrary to God's law of nature for a 
man to live in idleness. He who lives by the 
" sweat of his brow," is the happiest. In 
large cities many people are unhappy for 
want of employment. If their lot had been 



2 52 POVERTY. 

cast in the country, where they tilled the soil 
for their own account, this would never hap- 
pen. Poverty has, in large cities, very differ- 
ent appearances. It is often concealed in 
splendor, and often in extravagance. It is 
the care of a very great part of mankind to 
conceal their indigence from the rest. They 
support themselves by temporary expedients, 
and every day is lost in contriving for to-mor- 
row. Have the courage to appear poor, and 
you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting. Let 
it be said, that though he is poor, yet he 
always pays his debts. He that has much 
and wants more is poor ; he who has little 
and wants no more is rich. 

" Poor and content, is rich, and rich enough." — Shak. 

The poor man's purse may be empty, but he 
has as much gold in the sunset and as much 
silver in the moon as anybody. The richer a 
man is the more he dreads poverty ; thus 
poverty looks most frightful at a distance. 
Want is little to be dreaded, when a man has 
but a short time left to be miserable. Of all 
poverty, that of the mind is most deplorable. 
None but God and the poor know what the 



POVERTY. 253 

poor do for each other. Nature is a great 
believer in compensations. Those to whom 
she sends wealth, she saddles with lawsuits 
and dyspepsia. The poor never indulge in 
woodcock, but they have a style of appetite 
that converts a mackerel into a salmon, and that 
is quite as well. To miss a fortune is not neces- 
sarily a misfortune. Blessed may be the stroke 
of disaster that sets free the children of the rich, 
giving them over to the hard but kind bosom 
of poverty. If there is anything in the world, 
says Dr. Holland, that a young man should 
be more grateful for than another, it is the 
poverty which necessitates his starting in life 
under very great disadvantages. Poverty is 
one of the best tests of human quality in 
existence. A triumph over it is like gradu- 
ating with honor at West Point. It demon- 
strates stuff and stamina. It is a certificate 
of worthy labor faithfully performed. A 
young man who cannot stand this test, is not 
good for anything. He can never rise above 
a drudge or a pauper. A young man who 
cannot feel his will harden if the yoke of 
poverty presses upon him, and his pluck rise 
with every difficulty that poverty throws in 



254 



POVERTY. 



his way, may as well retire into some corner 
and hide himself. Poverty saves a thousand 
times more men than it ruins ; for it only ruins 
those who are not particularly worth saving, 
while it saves multitudes of those whom 
wealth has ruined. I pity you, my rich 
young friend, because you are in danger. 
You lack one great stimulus to effort and excel- 
lence, which your poor companion possesses. 
You will be very apt, if you have a soft spot 
in your head, to think yourself above him, 
and that sort of thing makes you mean, and 
injures you. With full pockets and full 
stomach, and good linen and broadcloth on 
your back, your heart and soul plethoric, in 
the race of life you will find yourself surpassed 
by all the poor boys around you, before you 
know it. No, my boy ; if you are poor, thank 
God and take courage, for he intends to give 
you a chance to make something of yourself. 
If you had plenty of money, ten chances to 
one it would spoil you for all useful purposes. 
Do you lack education ? Have you been 
cut short in the text book ? Remember that 
education, like some other things, does not 
consist in the multitude of things a man 



POVERTY. 2 55 

possesses. What can you do ? That is the 
question that settles the business for you. 
Do you know your business ? Do you know 
men, and how to deal with them ? Has your 
mind, by any means whatsoever, received 
that discipline which gives to it action, power 
and facility ? If so, then you are more a man, 
and a thousand times better educated, than 
the fellow who graduates from a college 
with his brains full of stuff that he cannot 
apply to the practical business of life — stuff, 
the acquisition of which has been in no sense a 
disciplinary process, so far as he is concerned. 
There are very few men in this world less 
than thirty years of age, and unmarried, who 
can afford to be rich. One of the greatest 
benefits to be reaped from great financial 
disasters, is the saving of a large crop of 
young men. 




XXXII. 
ABILITY AND OPPORTUNITY. 




the conditions of success, 
power and a field 



HESE are 

Give a man power ana a neia in 
which to use it, and he must accom- 
plish something. He may not do and become 
all that he desires and dreams of, but his life 
cannot be a failure. I never hear men com- 
plaining of the want of ability. The most 
unsuccessful think that they could do great 
things if they only had a chance. Somehow 
or other something or somebody has always 
been in the way. Providence has hedged 
them in so that they could not carry out their 
plans. They knew just how to get rich, but 
they lacked opportunity. 

Sit down by one who thus complains and 
ask him to tell you the story of his life. 
Before he gets half through he will give you 
occasion to ask him, " Why didn't you do so 

256 



ABILITY AND OPPORTUNITY. 2S7 

at that time ? Why didn't you stick to that 
piece of land and improve it, or to that busi- 
ness and develop it ? Is not the present 
owner of that property rich ? Is not the man 
who took up the business you abandoned 
successful ? " He will probably reply : " Yes, 
that was an opportunity ; but I did not think 
so then. I saw it when it was too late." In 
telling his story he will probably say, of his 
own accord, half a dozen times, " If I had 
known how things were going to turn I might 
have done as well as Mr. A. That farm of his 
was offered to me. I knew that it was a good 
one, and cheap, but I knew that it would 
require a great deal of hard work to get it 
cleared and fenced, to plant trees, vines, etc., 
and to secure water for irrigation. I did not 
like to undertake it. I am sorry now that I 
didn't. It was one of my opportunities." 

The truth is, God gives to all of us ability 
and opportunities enough to enable us to be 
moderately successful. If we fail, in ninety- 
five cases out of a hundred it is our own fault. 
We neglect to improve the talents with which 
our Creator endowed us, or we failed to enter 
the door that he opened for us. A man can- 
17 



2 58 ABILITY AND OPPORTUNITY. 

not expect that his whole life shall be made 
up of opportunities, that they will meet him 
at regular intervals as he goes on, like mile- 
stones by the roadside. Usually he has one 
or two, and if he neglects them he is like a man 
who takes the wrong - road where several meet. 
The further he goes the worse he fares. 

A man's opportunity usually has some re- 
lation to his ability. It is an opening for a man 
of his talents and means. It is an opening for 
him to use what he has, faithfully and to the 
utmost. It requires toil, self-denial and faith. 
If he says, " I want a better opportunity than 
that. I am worthy of a higher position than it 
offers ; " or if he says, " I won't work as hard 
and economize as closely as that opportunity 
demands," he may, in after years, see the folly 
of his pride and indolence. 

There are young men all over the land who 
want to get rich, and yet they scorn such oppor- 
tunities as A. T. Stewart and Commodore Van- 
derbilt improved. They want to begin, not as 
those men did, at the bottom of the ladder, 
but half way up. They want somebody to 
give them a lift, or carry them up in a balloon, 
so that they can avoid the early and arduous 



ABILITY AND OPPORTUNITY. 



259 



struggles of the majority of those who have 
been successful. No wonder that such men 
fail, and then complain of Providence. Grum- 
bling is usually a miserable expedient that peo- 
ple resort to to drown the reproaches of con- 
science. They know that they have been 
foolish, but they try to persuade themselves 
that they have been unfortunate. 




XXXIII. 



BEA UTY. 




EAUTY has been called " the power 



^T and aims of woman." Diogenes called 
it " woman's most forcible letter of 
recommendation." While a modern author 
defines it "a bait that as often catches the 
fisher as the fish." Nearly all the old philoso- 
phers denounced and ridiculed beauty as 
evanescent, worthless and mischievous ; but, 
alas! while they preached against it they were 
none the less its slaves. None of them were 
able to withstand "the sly, smooth witchcraft 
of a fair young face." A really beautiful wo- 
man is a natural queen in the universe of love, 
where all hearts pay a glad tribute to her 
reign. 

Nature, in many other works, has scattered 
her beauty with an unsparing hand ; but none 
of them impress so strongly upon the mind 

260 



BEAUTY. 261 

the idea of beauty as the female countenance. 
The flower may be more delicate in its for- 
mation, and may show a more exquisite color 
— the wide-spread meadow may display its 
beauty, and fields, and groves, and winding 
streams may variegate the scene ; yet all that 
is here presented fades before the female 
countenance. In the countenance of man, 
there is a certain majesty of look, which is 
not found in the other sex ; yet where is that 
softness, that sweet heavenly smile that plays 
upon the countenance of a female — -where is 
-that splendor that dazzles the eye of the be- 
holder — that expression that baffles all descrip- 
tion. The more we compare the female 
countenance with any other object, the more 
shall we be inclined to give the former the 
palm of loveliness, and the more ready to ex- 
claim with nature's sweet poet : 

" Where is any author in the world, 
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye ? " 

As among females there are some which 
are superior to others, so there are also some 
seasons when the female countenance excels 
in loveliness. I have seen her shine in all the 



1 



262 BEAUTY. 

vivacity and splendor of the assembly, partak- 
ing in the common gayety and enjoying the 
pleasures of the scene, with all the liveliness 
of youthful spirits. I have seen her at the 
fireside, attending to the management of do- 
mestic concerns — while her presence seemed 
to banish care, and her converse enlightened 
the family circle. I have seen her reposing 
in gentle sleep, when her eye was unconscious 
of my look — when the gentleness of her 
slumbers told that innocence was seated in 
her breast ; but never yet did I see female 
so lovely as when affliction had rent her 
bosom, and had chased the smile from her 
cheek. Affliction, however, though it had 
deprived her countenance of its vivacity, had 
given a softening expression to her features, 
which added to her loveliness. Her eyes 
were uplifted, in calm resignation, as if implor- 
ing help from Him, who is the father of the 
fatherless, and the comforter of the afflicted. 

The most fascinating women are those that 
can most enrich the every day moments of 
existence. In particular and attaching sense, 
they are all those that can partake our 
pleasures and our pains in the liveliest and 



BEAUTY. 263 

most devoted manner. Beauty is little with- 
out this. Beauty without virtue, is a flower 
without perfume. Virtue is the paint that 
can smooth the wrinkles of age. 

The violet will soon cease to smile. Flowers 
must fade. The love that has nothing but 
beauty to sustain it soon withers away. A 
pretty woman pleases the eye ; a good woman, 
the heart. The one is a jewel, the other a 
treasure. Invincible fidelity, good humor, 
and complacency of temper, outlive all the 
charms of a fine face, and make the decay of 
it invisible. 

Beauty has been not unaptly, though per- 
haps rather vulgarly, defined as " all in the 
eye," since it addresses itself solely to that 
organ, and is intrinsically of little value. 
From this ephemeral flower spring many of 
the ingredients of matrimonial unhappiness. 
It is a dangerous gift for both its possessor 
and its admirer. If its possession, as is often 
the case, turns the head, while its loss sours 
the temper, if the long regret of its decay 
outweighs the fleeting pleasure of its bloom, 
the plain should pity rather than envy the 
handsome. Beauty of countenance, which, 



264 BEAUTY. 

being the light of the soul shining through 
the face, is independent of features or com- 
plexion, is the most attractive as well as the 
most enduring" charm. Nothing* but talent 
and amiability can bestow it, no statue or pic- 
ture can rival it, and time itself cannot destroy 
it. Beauty, dear reader, is the woman you 
love the best — whatever she may seem to 
others. 

The secret of beauty is contentment. To 
be at peace with ourselves and our condition 
and surroundings is more to be prized than 
wealth or position. And this treasure lies 
within the power of each. Its possession de- 
pends entirely upon ourselves, and it should 
be deep and abiding. A cheerful, happy 
face, the mirror of a serene and peaceful 
mind, can give more real pleasure to your 
family than money. It can spread sunshine 
in the abode of poverty. Solomon well says 
that a contented mind is a continual feast. 
Contentment is opposed to fretting and cross- 
ness and frowns ; and these never help mat- 
ters. Chronic ill-humor sets its seal upon 
the face in lines never to be erased, and we 
instinctively avoid such people. Gooa-numor 



BEAUTY. 265 

and serenity also make their mark, and attract 
us by their loveliness. 

Personal beauty is a letter of recommenda- 
tion written by the hand of divinity, but fre- 
quently dishonored by the bearer. An en- 
emy of beauty is a foe to nature. We are 
always less prone to admit the perfection of 
those for whom our approbation is demanded ; 
and many a woman has appeared compara- 
tively plain in our eyes, from having - heard 
her charms extolled, whose beauty might 
otherwise have been readily admitted. As 
a want of exterior generally increases the 
interior beauty, we should perhaps generally 
do well to judge of woman as the impressions 
on medals — pronouncing those the most 
valuable which are the plainest. Nature 
seldom lavishes many of her gifts upon one 
subject : the peacock has no voice ; the beau- 
tiful Camellia Japonica has no odor ; and 
belles frequently have no great share of intel- 
lect. Beauties sometimes die old maids. 
They set such a value on themselves that 
they don't find a purchaser until the market 
is closed. She who studies her glass, neglects 
her heart. A beautiful woman if poor should 



266 BEAUTY. 

use a double circumspection ; for her beauty 
will tempt others, her poverty herself. " Thine 
was a dangerous gift," .says the poet Rogers, 
" the gift of beauty ; would thou hadst less, 
or wert as once thou wast." Many and varied 
are the female charms that conquer us. Here 
we find a woman whose strength, like Samson's, 
is in her hair ; a second holds your affections 
by her teeth ; and a third is a Cinderella, who 
wins hearts by her pretty little foot. But 
she is the most beautiful woman whom we 
love most ; and the woman we love the most 
is frequently the one to whom we talk of it 
the least. 

An author says, there are two sorts of 
persons which are not to be comforted ; a rich 
man who finds himself dying, and a beauty 
when she finds her charms fading. As flow- 
ers fade, and the waters flow to the ocean, so 
youth and beauty pass away, and our years 
hasten to eternity. 




XXXIV. 
LOVE. 

OMAN loves more than man because she 
sacrifices more. For every woman it 
is with the food of the heart as with 
that of the body ; it is possible to exist on a 
very small quantity, but that small quantity 
is an absolute necessity. Woman loves or 
abhors ; man admires or despises. Woman 
without love is a fruit without flavor. In 
love, the virtuous woman says no; the pas- 
sionate says yes ; the capricious says yes and 
no ; the coquette neither yes nor no. A 
coquette is a rose from whom every lover 
plucks a leaf; the thorn remains for the future 
husband. She may be compared to tinder 
which catches sparks, but does not always 
succeed in lighting a match. Love, while it 
frequently corrupts pure hearts, often purifies 
corrupt hearts. How well he knew the human 

267 



268 LOVE. 

heart who said, " we wish to constitute all the 
happiness, or if that cannot be, the misery of 
the one we love." Reason is only the last 
resource of love. 

He that loves upon the account of virtue, 
can never be weary ; because there are always 
fresh charms to attract and entertain him. 
Solid love, whose root is virtue, can no more 
die than virtue itself. It is by no means cer- 
tain that Mark Anthony, when he gave the 
world for love, didn't make a sharp bargain. 

He who loves a lady's complexion, form 
and features, loves not her true self, but her 
soul's old clothes. The love that has nothing 
but beauty to sustain it, soon withers and dies. 
The love that is fed with presents always re- 
quires feeding. 

Some writer asserts that " a French woman 
will love her husband if he is either witty or 
chivalrous ; a German woman, if he is constant 
and faithful ; a Dutch woman, if he does not 
disturb her ease and comfort too much ; a 
Spanish woman, if he wreaks vengeance on 
those who incur his displeasure ; an Italian 
woman, if he is dreamy and poetical ; a Danish 
woman, if he thinks that her native country 



LOVE. 269 

is the brightest and happiest on earth ; a Rus- 
sian woman, if he despises all Westerners as 
miserable barbarians ; an English woman, if 
he succeeds in ingratiating himself with the 
court and the aristocracy ; an American woman, 
if — he has plenty of money." 

There are two classes of disappointed lovers 
— those who are disappointed before marriage, 
and the more unhappy ones who are disap- 
pointed after it. To be deprived of a person 
we love is a happiness in comparison of living 
with one we hate. 

At first it surprises one that love should be 
made the principal staple of all the best kinds 
of fiction ; and perhaps it is to be regretted 
that it is only one kind of love that is chiefly 
depicted in works of fiction. But that love 
itself is the most remarkable thine in human 
life, there cannot be the slightest doubt. 
For, see what it will conquer. It is not only 
that it prevails over selfishness, but it has 
the victory over weariness, tiresomeness and 
familiarity. When you are with the person 
loved, you have no sense of being bored. 
This humble and trival circumstance is the 
great test — the only sure and abiding test of 



270 LOVE. 

love. With the persons you do not love you 
are never supremely at your ease. You have 
some of the sensation of walking upon stilts. 
In conversation with them, however much 
you admire them and are interested in them, 
the horrid idea will cross your mind of 
"What shall I say next?" Converse with 
them is not perfect association. But with 
those you love, the satisfaction in their pres- 
ence is not unlike that of the relations of the 
heavenly bodies to one another, which, in 
their silent revolutions, lose none of their 
attractive power. The sun does not talk to 
the world, but it attracts it. 

The love which survives the tomb, is one of 
the noblest attributes of the soul. If we still 
love those we lose, we cannot altogether lose 
those we love. Oh, man, fear not for thy 
affections, and feel no dread lest time should 
efface them ! There is neither to-day nor 
yesterday in the powerful echoes of memory 
— there is only always. He who no longer 
feels, has never felt. There are two memories 
— the memory of the senses, which wears out 
with the senses, and in which perishable things 
decay ; and the memory of the soul, for which 



LOVE. 271 

time does not exist, and which lives over, at 
the same instant, every moment of its past and 
present existence. Fear not, ye who love. 
Time has power over hours, none over the 
soul. Love is the great instrument and 
engine of nature, the bond and cement of 
society, the spring and spirit of the universe. 
It is of that active, restless nature, that it 
must of necessity exert itself ; and like the 
fire, to which it is so often compared, it is not 
a free agent to choose whether it will heat or 
no, but it streams forth by natural results, 
and unavoidable emanations, so that it will 
fasten upon an inferior, unsuitable object, 
rather than none at all. The soul may sooner 
leave off to subsist than to love, and like the 
vine, it withers and dies if it has nothing to 
embrace. 

That love is the leading element of the 
highest happiness in marriage ; that love, 
while it lasts, covers a multitude of errors, 
privations, misfortunes — even sins — I do not 
doubt. But the question is, how far is love, 
when unaccompanied by any other of the con- 
ditions which I have mentioned as belonging 
to a perfect marriage, itself a justification of 



272 LOVE. 

marriage ? True love works wonders ; but it 
cannot prevent the physical and mental ail- 
ments which develop themselves in people of 
feeble organisms. It cannot supply a lack of 
intelligence, a want of force in either husband 
or wife ; and, as all housekeepers know, it 
cannot " make the pot boil." Love alone, 
when we consider its proverbial instability, 
and the small chance it has of surviving under 
bleak conditions, is certainly an insufficient 
capital upon which to commence the partner- 
ship of marriage. This is true of even the 
highest and strongest loved ; how much more 
so of the hasty and passionate attachments 
which lead to so many thousands of marriages ! 
There is an infinity of false sentiment about 
the passion of love. While I would not cast 
a doubt upon the existence of noble love, of 
devotion, and of passion which no sorrow or 
trial can tire, which is even refined and 
strengthened by suffering, yet the value, the 
office, the very nature of love in our ordinary 
life is greatly misunderstood. Love is the 
most exaggerated passion in literature. It 
holds in our imagination a position which it 
does not hold in the life of one man or woman 
in a thousand. " Being the supreme passion 



LOVE. 273 

of modern art," says a recent writer, " it be- 
comes necessary to sound high its praises. 
We should suppose, if we read only novels 
and poetry, that the one thing interesting in 
life is the relation of the sexes and the anxie- 
ties of pairing. Many young people are so 
dizzy with love that they are unable to go on 
with the other interests of life. They cannot 
see men as they are, engaged in their daily 
work, pursuing their various ends and living 
a multifarious life, of which love is but a sin- 
gle element." Our regard for the passion 
oversteps the healthy limit, and becomes mor- 
bid ; we judge of it untruly ; we attend to its 
promptings with absurd expectations, we teach 
ourselves that the passion is uncontrollable, 
and regard it as a kind of fate ; and we glo- 
rify the supremacy of a first love, as if the 
heart did not require a training as varied 
as the intellect. Considering the widespread 
misery which our misconceptions of love have 
wrought, we might doubt whether this pas- 
sion was not the greatest misfortune as well 
as the greatest blessing in the world. We 
may conclude, in spite of Chaucer, that love's 
allegiance is not the only thing needful to 

make a permanently happy marriage. 
18 




XXXV. 
COURTSHIP. 

HE ostensible object of courtship is the 
choice of a companion. For no other 
object should any intercourse having 
the appearance of courtship be permitted or 
indulged in. It is a species of high handed 
fraud upon an unsuspecting heart, worthy of 
the heaviest penalty of public opinion, or 
law. The affections are too tender and sacred 
to be trifled with. He who does it is a wretch. 
He should be ranked among thieves, robbers, 
villains, and murderers. He who steals money 
steals trash ; but he who steals affections 
without a return of similar affections, steals 
that which is dearer than life and more pre- 
cious than wealth. His theft is a robbery of 
the heart. 

How little is thought of the first buddings 
of love between two young persons ! By the 
parents it is often deemed a fitting subject for 

274 



COURTSHIP. 275 

joke and laughter. The parties themselves, 
conscious chiefly of a mutual attraction, aban- 
don themselves to romantic visions of future 
bliss, and to efforts to please each other. 
Little do they dream that from their gay and 
lightsome intercourse is to proceed a stream 
of exquisite delight, or of burning poison, 
running parallel, perhaps, with their immortal 
existence. Yet so it is. A life of bitter, 
bitter anguish, or of as much happiness as is 
permitted to mortals on earth, lies enclosed 
in the, but too lightly esteemed, state of 
courtship. Next to marriage, it is the 
gravest and most solemn affair relating to life 
this side the grave. 

One of the meanest things a young man can 
do, and it is not at all of uncommon occurrence, 
is to monopolize the time and attention of a 
young girl for a year, or more, without any 
definite object, and to the exclusion of other 
gentlemen, who, supposing him to have matri- 
monial intentions, absent themselves from her 
society. This selfish " dog-in-the-manger " 
way of proceeding should be discountenanced 
and forbidden by all parents and guardians. 
It prevents the reception of eligible offers of 



276 COURTSHIP. 

marriage, and fastens upon the young lady, 
when the acquaintance is finally dissolved, the 
unenviable and tmmerited appellation of 
"flirt." Let all your dealings with women, 
young man, be frank, honest, and noble. That 
many whose education and position in life 
would warrant our looking for better things, 
are culpably criminal on these points, is no 
excuse ior your short-comings. That woman 
is often injured, or wronged, through her 
holiest feelings, adds but a blacker dye to 
your meanness. Treat every woman you meet 
as you would wish another man to treat yoitr 
innocent, confiding sister. 

Courtships are the sweet and dreamy thres- 
holds of unseen Edens, where half the world 
has paused in couples, talked in whispers, 
under the moonlight, and passed on, and 
never returned. Little squalls don't upset 
the lover's boat ; they drive it all the faster 
to port. 

Courtship, says the Rev. G. S. Weaver, 
should not seek to captivate, but to learn real 
character. Love character, not person merely. 
Feeling, not reason, leads astray. Courting 
the wrong way is by impulse, and not judg- 



COURTSHIP. 277 

ment ; by a process of wooing, and not of dis- 
covery ; an effort to please, and not a search 
for companionship ; with excitement, and not 
with calmness and deliberation ; in haste, and 
not with cautious prudence ; a vision of the 
heart, and not a solemn reality ; conducted 
by feeling, and not by reason ; so managed 
as to be a perpetual blandishment of pleasure 
the most intoxicating and delightful, and not 
a trying ordeal for the enduring realities of 
solid and stubborn life ; a perpetual yielding 
up of everything, and not a firm maintenance 
of everything that belongs to the man or 
woman. In almost every particular false, 
and hence must be followed by evil conse- 
quences. 

The young man and young woman who form 
a solemn matrimonial alliance at any age 
before they have attained manhood and 
womanhood, do it more in folly than in wis- 
dom, more in passion than in love, do it at 
the risk of their life's peace, and the most 
fearful consequences that follow in the train 
of such matrimonial adventures. It can only 
be called a matrimonial adventure. They do 
it in childish ignorance. It is not possible for 



2/8 COURTSHIP. 

a youth at that age to have a judgment suffi- 
ciently matured, and a heart sufficiently sub- 
dued, to render him capable of forming an 
absolutely correct opinion upon a subject of 
such vast importance and such complicated 
results. Treat it lightly as you will, it is a 
subject of the most momentous importance to 
human virtue, prosperity and happiness, and 
involves much of the most intricate and pro- 
found philosophy of human life, conduct and 
character. A subject of such importance 
requires the matured powers of manhood and 
womanhood, and the experience and obser- 
vation of such maturity. 

Many young ladies indulge in very nonsen- 
sical opinions, or, rather notions, concerning 
love. They foolishly fancy themselves bound 
to be " smitten," to " fall in love," to be 
" love-sick," with almost every silly idler who 
wears a fashionable coat, is tolerably good- 
looking, and pays them particular attention. 
Reason, judgment, deliberation, according to 
their fancies, have nothing to do with love. 
Hence, they yield to their feelings, and give 
their company to young men, regardless of 
warning advice or entreaty. A father's sad- 



COURTSHIP. 279 

ness, a mother's tears, are treated with con- 
tempt, and often with bitter retorts. Their 
lovers use flattering words, and, like silly 
moths fluttering round the fatal lamp, they 
allow themselves to be charmed into certain 
misery. Affection is founded upon esteem ; 
estimable qualities in a man can alone secure 
the continuance of connubial love ; if these 
are not in him, love has no foundation, it is 
unreal, and will fall, a wilted flower, as soon 
as the excitement of youthful passion is over- 
past. 

Passion leads us into a dream-land of folly. 
Time dissolves the airy fabric of the fancy, 
and the soul awakes to mourn, disconsolate, 
amid the ruins which surround it. Listen not, 
therefore, to the voices of passion. Heed 
your reason. Keep the precious love of your 
young heart, until you find a partner every 
way worthy of it. You have no treasure 
like that love. Bestow it unworthily, and 
you are hopelessly ruined. Give it to some 
pure heart, full of noble qualities, and you 
will drink joy from a pure fountain. 

With every young lady the paramount ques- 
tion concerning him who offers her particular 



280 



COURTSHIP. 



attentions, ought to be, "Is he worthy of my 
love ? " Her first aim should be to decide it. 
She should observe him well and thoughtfully, 
— study his character as it may be expressed 
in his counteannce, his words, spirit, and 
actions. Through her parents she should 
inquire into his previous history, and learn 
especially if he has been a dutiful son and 

AN AFFECTIONATE BROTHER. This last is a 

vital test, though it is generally overlooked ; 
but it is very sure, that a young man devoid 
of filial and fraternal love, will not, can not 
make a good husband. 

In the free, social intercourse of a young 
lady with her friends of the other sex, the 
idea of love, or a particular preference of one 
over the other, should never be permitted to 
enter her mind. She should look upon them 
as her intelligent friends, and feel that their 
association was for mutual advantage in 
elevating the mind, improving the taste, and 
strengthening the moral principles. 

There is a popular feeling that it is some- 
what a disgrace for a woman to pass through 
life unmarried ; and shrinking from that 
obloquy, multitudes marry according to the 



COURTSHIP. 281 

forms of law when they are not drawn 
together by any qualities of mind and soul, 
and there is no true marriage of heart. What 
wonder, then, that discontent and misery 
arise, and a divorce, if not sought, is often 
desired ! Those who regard love as a flame 
that comes as a flash of gunpowder, must not 
feel disappointed if the blackness and deso- 
lation that succeed a gunpowder flash is all 
that is left after their brief infatuation is over. 
All love before, marriage should be a study 
for love after marriage. If not well under- 
stood, its power is apt to become exhausted. 
The power of love must be measured not by 
its intensity, but by its effects ; by its benefi- 
cence in bringing into play a higher range of 
motives, by the facilities it unfolds, by its 
skill in harmonizing different natures. 

Nine out of ten look upon marriage as 
a gambling fair — to snatch an article at a 
venture ; and consider the prizes are not much 
more numerous in the one than in the other. 
When there are fewer secret manoeuvres and 
tricks of courtship before marriage, there will 
be less unhappiness after. How often we see 
couples who are " engaged " trying to hide 






282 COURTSHIP. 

little foibles and eccentricities from the one 
they are expecting to live a life-time with ! 
How blind such a course is! Then, if ever, 
the true characteristics of each should appear ! 
If anything is objectionable before marriage, 
how much more so after, when a lie is added 
to it ! Live true lives when you are " court- 
ing." Better an engagement should be broken 
off, than a life should be wasted. Many coun- 
sel the young not to expect too much of love. 
That is an evil philosophy, however, which 
advises to moderation by undervaluing the 
possibilities of a true and glorious love. Hap- 
piness in this life depends more upon the 
capacity of loving than on any other single 
quality. If men lose all the treasure of love, 
it does not prove that the treasure is not to be 
found, but that they have not sought aright. 
Many men dig for diamonds in love, and only 
find pebbles in wedded life. The diamonds 
are there, however, only they know not how 
to dig for them. 




XXXVI. 
MARRIAGE. 

'HIS is a subject upon which very few 
think seriously, and those who make 
it a matter of much reflection too gen- 
erally think erroneously. 

The great difficulty, with regard to those 
who most need proper instruction on this sub- 
ject, is, that they will not hearken to what is 
said to them, but either follow the leadings of 
impulse and passion, or look with cool delibera- 
tion to the attainment of some selfish end. In 
either case, mutual unhappiness is the almost 
inevitable result. 

Whoever marries without having just ideas 
of so important a relation, runs great danger of 
committing an error that will render turbid for 
life all the well-springs of happiness. 

When the honeymoon passes away, setting 
behind dull mountains, or dipping silently into 

283 



284 



MARRIAGE. 









the stormy sea of life, the trying hour of 
married life has come. Between the parties 
there are no more illusions. The feverish 
desire for possession has gone, and all excite- 
ment receded. Then begins, or should, the 
business of adaptation. If they find that they 
do not love one another as they thought they 
did, they should double their assiduous atten- 
tions to one another, and be jealous of every- 
thing which tends in the slightest way to 
separate them. Life is too precious to be 
thrown away in secret regrets or open differ- 
ences. And let me say to every one to whom 
the romance of life has fled, and who are dis- 
contented in the slightest decree with their 
conditions and relations, begin this recon- 
ciliation at once. Renew the attentions of 
earlier days. Draw your hearts close to- 
gether. Talk the thing all over. Acknowl- 
edge your faults to one another, and determine 
that henceforth you will be all in all to each 
other ; and my word for it, you shall find in 
your relation the sweetest joy earth has for 
you. There is no other way for you to do. 
If you are happy at home, you must be happy 
abroad ; the man or woman who has settled 



MARRIAGE. 2 85 

down upon the conviction that he or she is at- 
tached for life to an uncongenial yoke-fellow, 
and that there is no way of escape, has lost 
life ; there is no effort too costly to make which 
can restore to its setting upon the bosom the 
missing pearl. 

If it be scarcely possible for two persons 
connected by the ties of common friendship, 
to live constantly together, or even habitually 
to pass much time in mutual society, without 
gradually approaching nearer and nearer in 
their sentiments and habits ; still less probable 
is it, that from the closest and most attractive 
of all bands of union a similar effect should 
not be the result. The effect will be experi- 
enced by both parties, and perhaps in an equal 
degree. But if it be felt by one in a greater 
degree than by the other, it seems likely to be 
thus felt by the husband. In female manners 
inspired by affection, and bearing at once the 
stamp of modesty and of good sense, example 
operates with a captivating force which lew 
can resist. 

But, whatever be the influence which the 
amiable virtues of a wife may obtain over her 
husband ; let not the consciousness of it ever 






2 86 MARRIAGE. 

lead her to seek opportunities of displaying it, 
nor to cherish a wish to intrude into those de- 
partments which belong not to her jurisdic- 
tion. Content with the province which reason 
and revelation have assigned to her, and 
sedulous to fulfil, with cheerful alacrity, the 
duties which they prescribe ; let her equally 
guard against desiring to possess undue weight 
over her husband's conduct, and against exer- 
cising amiss that which properly belongs to 
her. 

Married people should never be without a 
home of their own, from the day when they 
are united to the day of their death. By 
giving it up, they may save money and avoid 
trouble, but they are sure to lose happiness 
and substantial comfort, and a great part of 
the best uses of life. This is true at all times ; 
but there are no five years in which it is so 
important as those in which it is most fre- 
quently disregarded. 

Home life is the proper and normal con- 
dition of marriage, and they who have no 
home of their own are not much better than 
half married, after all. 

The objection made is the expense. They 



MARRIAGE. 287 

cannot afford the first outlay, and the contin- 
ued expenditure involved. To which we 
might give a first and general answer, that until 
we can afford to provide a home we have no 
business to be married. But we admit that 
the objection lies deeper and is more difficult 
of removal than at first appears. It consists 
in foolish habits of expenditure and in absurd 
social ambition, by which unreal necessities 
are created, and the problem of domestic life 
is made one of almost impossible solution. It 
is this which either prevents marriage or 
destroys its comfort. When a young woman 
who is accustomed to live and dress like a 
princess, and a man who has always expended 
his whole income on himself, contract an 
alliance, they must either have a large income 
to maintain the accustomed style, or adopt 
the very unaristocratic expedient of "lodg- 
ings," so as to keep up the appearance before 
the world, and economize in comfort for the 
sake of being extravagant in show. How 
much there is of this let every American city 
declare. A part of the evil, and no small part, 
is the fault of parents, who train their daugh- 
ters so that nothing but wealth can make 



288 



MARRIAGE. 



them happy, and economy is a virtue vulgar 
and hateful in their eyes ; but chiefly it is a 
general lack of good sense, false ideas of re- 
spectabilty, the want of independence, and 
almost servile subjection to the opinion of 
what we call the world, which generally means 
some fifteen or twenty of the silliest persons 
of our acquaintance. 

Two things are essential to the happiness 
of married life : First, to have a home of one's 
own ; and, second, to establish it upon such a 
scale as to live distinctly and clearly within 
one's means — if possible, not quite up to them, 
and by 110 possibility beyond them. A great 
proportion of the failures in wedlock may be 
traced directly to the neglect of the latter 
rule. No man can feel happy or enjoy the 
comfort of his own fireside, who is spending 
more than he earns. Debt destroys his self- 
respect, puts him at variance with the world, 
and makes him irritable, ill-tempered, and 
hard to please. There is no Christian virtue, 
no Christian grace, that can keep company 
with the burdensome annoyance of debt. 
The thought of unpaid bills, and of rent 
falling due and unprovided for, destroys the 



MARRIAGE. 289 

relish of one's food and awakens him from 
the soundest sleep at night, and the luxuries 
for which the debts were contracted become 
loathsome in his sight. Then comes fault- 
finding and recrimination, and love flies out 
at the window when the sheriff threatens to 
come in at the door. Romantic people may 
talk as much as they please about indulgent 
husbands and fascinating wives, but the plain 
matter of fact is, that no attraction or charms 
in the wife, either of person or of mind, are 
more available in keeping the husband's 
affection and respect, than the despised virtues 
of economy and thrift. By such care for his 
interests she confers daily benefits upon him, 
she lessens and cheers his labor, she increases 
his credit, and enlarges his prosperity ; " She 
will do him good and not evil all the days of 
her life." 

We are not so absurd as to sing the praise 
of poverty, for no one remains poor when he 
can help it ; but it certainly has its compensa- 
tions, and they who are afraid of marriages, 
or being married, deny themselves the luxury 
and inherent respectability of a home, because 
their house must be small and their furniture 
19 



290 



MARRIAGE. 



poplar instead of rose-wood, do not deserve 
to be happy. Let them begin according, to 
their means, however small, and honestly 
living within them be contented with what 
they have. Every added comfort, as they go 
onward, will be prized, and if wealth be at 
last attained it will be enjoyed, while those 
who begin at the top of earthly prosperity 
can at the best only remain there, and in the 
mutations of human affairs are most likely to 
come down. The truth is that, as already 
said, happiness, in any respectable sense of 
the word, depends very little upon what we 
have, and almost entirely upon what we are. 

The husband and wife who literally take 
care of each other, depending comparatively 
little upon the vexatious intervention of 
servants, at the same time enjoy the duty 
and appreciate the kindness. The comforts 
which one owes directly to the wife's diligent 
and affectionate care and industry, are won- 
derfully different from those which money 
buys and are brought by mercenary hands. 
The costly gifts of riches, involving no labor 
or inconvenience, are prized for their splendor 
and beauty, and are accepted, perhaps as 






MARRIAGE. 291 

tokens of regard; but they are not half so 
precious as gifts, comparatively trifling, made 
valuable by the consecration of pains-taking 
and self-denial. I speak to many who have 
tried both experiences — who began in the 
most humble and moderate manner and have 
gradually worked upward — and they would 
all testify that, after the positive inconvenience 
of straitened circumstances had passed, the 
happiest part of life was in the enjoyment of 
neither riches nor poverty, of moderate cir- 
cumstances and quiet domestic life. They 
look back to those days as the happiest, when 
by mutual helping they gave and received the 
proofs of affection and tenderness. 

Marriage is to a woman, at once the happiest 
and saddest event of her life ; it is the promise 
of future bliss, raised on the death of all 
present enjoyment. She quits her home, her 
parents, her companions, her occupations, her 
amusements — her everything upon which she 
has hitherto depended for comfort — for affec- 
tion, for kindness, for pleasure. The parents 
by whose advice she has been guided, the 
sister to whom she has dared impart every 
embryo thought and feeling, the brother who 



292 



MARRIAGE. 



has played with her, in turns the counselor 
and the counseled, and the younger children 
to whom she has hitherto been the mother 
and the playmate — all are to be forsaken in 
one instant ; every former tie is loosened, the 
spring of every hope and action to be changed, 
and yet she flies with joy into the untrodden 
paths before her. Buoyed up by the confi- 
dence of requited love, she bids a fond and 
grateful adieu to the life that is past, and 
turns with excited hopes and joyous anticipa- 
tions of the happiness to come. 

Leigh Hunt concludes an essay on marriage 
as follows : " There is no one thing more 
lovely in this life, more full of the divinest 
courage, than when a young maiden, from 
her past life, from her happy childhood, when 
she rambled over every field and moor around 
her home ; when a mother anticipated her 
wants and soothed her little cares ; when 
brothers and sisters grew from merry play- 
mates to loving, trustful friends ; from the 
Christmas gatherings and romps, the summer 
festivals in bower or garden ; from the rooms 
sanctified by the death of relatives ; from the 
holy and secure backgrounds of her childhood, 



MARRIAGE. 



293 



and girlhood, and maidenhood, looks out into 
a dark and unillumined future, away from all 
that, and yet unterrified, undaunted, leans her 
fair cheek upon her lover's breast, and whis- 
pers, ' Dear heart ! I cannot see, but I believe. 
The past was beautiful, but the future I can 
trust with thee / '" 

Then woe to the man who can blast such 
hopes — who can, coward- like, break the illu- 
sions that have won her, and destroy the con- 
fidence which his love inspired. 






XXXVII. 
AFTER MARRIAGE. 

ANY a woman has gone into her room 
and had a " good cry " because her 
husband called her by her baptismal 
name, and not by some absurd nickname in- 
vented in the days of their folly ; or because, 
pressed for time, he hurried out of the house 
without going through the established formula 
of leave-taking. The lover has merged into 
the husband ; security has taken the place 
of wooing ; and the woman does not take 
kindly to the transformation. Sometimes she 
plays a dangerous game, and tries what flirt- 
ing with other men will do. If her scheme 
does not answer, and her husband is not made 
jealous, she is revolted, and holds herself that 
hardly-used being, a neglected wife. She 
cannot accept as a compliment the quiet trust 
which certain cool-headed men of a loyal kind, 

294 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 296 

place in their wives ; and his tolerance of her 
flirting manner — which he takes to be man- 
ner only, with no evil in it, and with which, 
though he may not especially like, he does 
not interfere — seems to her indifference rather 
than tolerance. Yet the confidence implied 
in this forbearance is, in point of fact, a com- 
pliment worth all the petits soins ever invented, 
though this hearty faith is just the thing which 
annoys her, and which she stigmatizes as 
neglect. If she were to go far enough she 
would find out her mistake. But by that time 
she would have gone too far to profit by her 
experience. 

Nothing is more annoying than that display 
of affection which some husbands and wives 
show to each other in society. That familiar- 
ity of touch, those half-concealed caresses, 
those absurd names, that prodigality of endear- 
ing epithets, that devoted attention which 
they flaunt in the face of the public as a kind 
of challenge to the world at large, to come 
and admire their happiness, is always noticed 
and laughed at. Yet to some women this 
parade of love is the very essence of married 
happiness, and part of their dearest privileges. 



296 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



They believe themselves admired and envied, 
when they are ridiculed and scoffed at ; and 
they think their husbands are models for other 
men to copy, when they are taken as examples 
for all to avoid. Men who have any real man- 
liness, however, do not give in to this kind of 
thing ; though there are some as effeminate 
and gushing as women themselves, who like 
this sloppy effusiveness of love, and carry it on 
into quite old age, fondling the ancient grand- 
mother with gray hairs as lavishly as they had 
fondled the youthful bride, and seeing no want 
of harmony in calling a withered old dame of 
sixty and upwards by the pet names by which 
they had called her when she was a slip of a 
girl of eighteen. The continuance of love from 
youth to old age is very lovely, very cheering ; 
but even " John Anderson, my Jo," would 
lose its pathos if Mrs. Anderson had ignored 
the difference between the raven locks and 
the snowy brow. This public display of 
familiar affection is never seen among men 
who pride themselves on making good lovers, 
as certain men do — those who have reduced 
the practice of love-making to an art, a 
science, and know their lesson to a letter. 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



297 



These men are delightful to women, who like 
nothing so much as beinsf made love to, as 
well after marriage as ' before ; but men who 
take matters quietly, and rely on the good 
sense of their wives to take matters quietly, 
too, sail round these scientific adorers for both 
depth and manliness. And if women knew 
their best interests they would care more for 
the trust than the science. 

All that excess of flattering and petting of 
which women are so fond, becomes a bore to 
a man if required as part of the daily habit of 
life. Out in the world as he is, harassed by 
anxieties of which she knows nothing, home 
is emphatically his place of rest, where his 
wife is his friend who knows his mind, where 
he may be himself without fear of offending, 
and relax the strain that must be kept up out 
of doors ; where he may feel himself safe, 
understood, and at ease. And some women, 
and these by no means the coldest or the least 
loving, are wise enough to understand this 
need of rest in the man's harder life, and 
accepting the quiet of security as part of the 
conditions of marriage, content themselves 
with the undemonstrative love into which the 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



fever of passion has subsided. Others fret 
over it, and make themselves and their hus- 
bands wretched because they cannot believe 
in that which is not forever paraded before 
their eyes. Yet what kind of a home is it for 
the man if he has to walk as if on egg-shells, 
every moment afraid of wounding the suscepti- 
bilities of a woman who will take nothing on 
trust, and who has to be continually assured 
that he still loves her, before she will believe 
that to-day is as yesterday ? Of one thing 
she may be certain ; no wife who understands 
what is the best kind of marriage demands 
these continual attentions, which, voluntary 
offerings of the lover, become enforced tribute 
from the husband. She knows that as a wife, 
whom it is not necessary to court or flatter, 
she has a nobler place than that which is 
expressed by the attentions paid to a mistress. 
Wifehood, like all assured conditions, does not 
need to be buttressed up, but a less certain 
position must be supported from the outside, 
and an insecure self-respect, an uncertain hold- 
ing, must be perpetually strengthened and 
reassured. Women who cannot live happily 
without being made love to are more like 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



:Q9 



mistresses than wives, and come but badly 
off in the great struggles of life and the cruel 
handling of time. Placing all their happiness 
in things which cannot continue, they let slip 
that which lies in their hands, and in their 
desire to retain the romantic position of lov- 
ers, lose the sweet security of wives. Per- 
haps, if they had higher aims in life than 
those with which they make shift to satisfy 
themselves, they would not let themselves 
sink to the level of this folly, and would un- 
derstand better than they do now the worth 
of realities as contrasted with appearances. 
And yet we cannot but pity the poor, weak, 
craving souls who long so pitifully for the 
freshness of the morning to continue far into 
the day and evening, who cling so tenaciously 
to the fleeting romances of youth. They are 
taken by the glitter of things — love-making 
among the rest ; and the man who is the 
showiest in his affection, who can express it 
with the most color, and paint it, so to speak, 
with the minutest touches, is the man whose 
love seems to them the most trustworthy and 
the most intense. They often make the mis- 
take of confounding this show with the sub- 



300 AFTER MARRIAGE. 

stance, of trusting to pictorial expression rather 
than solid facts. And they often make the 
mistake of cloying their husbands with per- 
sonal half-childish caresses, which were all 
very well in the early days, but which become 
tiresome as time goes on and the gravity of 
life deepens. And then, when the man quiet- 
ly keeps them off, or more brusquely repels 
them, they are hurt and miserable, and think 
the whole happiness of their lives is dead, 
and all that makes marriage beautiful at an 
end. What is to be done to balance things 
evenly in this unequal world of sex ? What, 
indeed, is to be done at any time to recon- 
cile strength with weakness, and to give each 
its due ? One thing at least is sure. The 
more thoroughly women learn the true na- 
ture of men, the fewer mistakes they will 
make, and the less unhappiness they will 
create for themselves ; and the more patient 
men are with the hysterical excitability, the 
restless craving, which nature, for some pur- 
pose at present unknown, has made the 
special temperament of women, the fewer 
femmes incomprises there will be in married 
homes, and the larger the chance of married 
happiness. 



AFTER MARRIAGE. ?oi 

The great secret is, to learn to bear with 
each other's failings ; not to be blind to them 
— that is either an impossibility or a folly ; 
we must see and feel them ; if we do neither, 
they are not evils to us, and there is obviously 
no need of forbearance ; but, to throw the 
mantle of affection around them, concealing 
them from each other's eyes ; to determine 
not to let them chill the affections ; to resolve 
to cultivate good-tempered forbearance, be- 
cause it is the only way of mitigating the 
present evil, always with a view to ultimate 
amendment. Surely, it is not the perfection, 
but the imperfection, of human character that 
makes the strongest claim in love. All the 
world must approve, even enemies must 
admire the good and the estimable in human 
nature. If husband and wife estimate only 
that in each which all must be constrained to 
value, what do they more than others ? It is 
infirmities of character, imperfections of 
nature, that call for pitying sympathy, the 
tender compassion, that makes each the com- 
forter, the monitor of the other. Forbearance 
helps each to attain command over themselves. 
Few are the creatures so utterly evil as to 



302 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



abuse a generous confidence, a calm forbear- 
ance. Married persons should be preemi- 
nently friends, and fidelity is the great privilege 
of friendship. The forbearance here contended 
for is not a weak and wicked indulgence of 
each other's faults, but such a calm, tender ob- 
servation of them as excludes all harshness 
and anger, and takes the best and gentlest 
methods of pointing them out in the full con- 
fidence of affection. 

The very nearest approach to domestic fe- 
licity on earth is in the mutual cultivation of 
an absolute unselfishness. Never talk at one 
another either alone or in company ; never 
both manifest anger at once ; never speak 
loud to one another, unless the house is on 
fire ; never reflect on a past action, which 
was done with a good motive and the 
best judgment at the time ; let each one 
strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of 
the other ; let self-abnegation be the daily 
aim and effort of each ; never find fault, unless 
it is perfectly certain that a fault has been 
committed, and always speak lovingly ; never 
taunt with a past mistake ; neglect the whole 
world besides rather than one another ; never 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 303 

allow a request to be repeated ; never make 
a remark at the expense of the other, it is a 
meanness ; never part for a day without 
loving words to think of during absence ; 
never meet without a loving welcome ; never 
let the sun go down on any anger or grievance ; 
never consider any fault you have committed 
settled until you have frankly confessed it and 
asked forgiveness ; never forget the happy 
hours of early love ; never sigh over what 
might have been, but try to make the best 
of what is ; never forget that marriage is 
ordained of God, and that His blessing alone 
can make it what it should ever be ; never be 
contented till you know you are both walking 
in the narrow way ; never let your hopes rest 
upon anything this side of the eternal home. 
Preserve the privacies of your house, your 
marriage state and your hearts from father, 
mother, sister, brother and all the world. 
Between you two let no third person come to 
share the secret joy or grief that belongs to 
yourselves alone. Do you two, with God's help, 
build your own quiet world, not allowing 
your dearest earthly friend to be the confidant 
of aught that concerns your domestic peace. 



304 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



Let moments of alienation, if they occur, be 
veiled and forgotten in moments and years of 
faithful, devoted love, but never let the wall 
of another's confidence be built up between 
you and your wife's or your husband's heart. 
Promise this to yourselves and to each other. 
Renew the vow at every temptation ; you will 
find your account in it ; your souls will grow, 
as it were, together, and at last be as one. 
Ah, if many a young pair had on their wed- 
ding day known this all-important secret, how 
many marriages would have been happier than, 
alas, they are ! 

Be not weary in well-doing. An old story 
contains a lesson which many married couples 
have not yet learned. When Jonathan Trum- 
bull was Governor of Connecticut, a gentle- 
man called at his house one day requesting a 
private interview. He said : " I have called 
upon a very unpleasant errand, sir, and want 
your advice. My wife and I do not live 
happily together, and I am thinking of getting 
a divorce. What do you advise, sir ? " The 
governor sat a few moments in thought ; then 
turning to his visitor, said, " How did you 
treat Mrs. W when you were courting 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 305 

her ? and how did you feel toward her at the 
time of your marriage ? " Squire W re- 
plied, - u I treated her as kindly as I could, for 
I loved her dearly at that time." " Well, 
sir," said the governor, " go home and court 
her now just as you did then, and love her 
as when you married her. Do this in the 
fear of God for one year, and then tell me the 
result." When a year passed away Squire 

W called a^ain to see the governor, and 

said : " I have called to thank you for the 
good advice you gave me, and to tell you that 
my wife and I are as happy as when first we 
were married. I cannot be grateful enough 
for your good counsel." " I am glad to hear 

it, Mr. W ," said the governor, " and I 

hope you will continue to court your wife as 
long as you live." 

Addison has left on record the following 
important sentence : " Two persons who have 
chosen each other out of all the species, with 
the design to be each other's mutual comfort, 
and entertainment, have in that very action 
bound themselves to be good humored, affable, 
joyful, forgiving and patient, with respect to 
each other's frailties and imperfections, to the 
20 



306 AFTER MARRIAGE. 

end of their lives." Mr. Henry says : " I have 
heard of a married couple who, though they 
were both of a hasty temper, yet lived com- 
fortably together by simply observing a rule 
on which they had mutually agreed, viz.: 
' Never to be both angry at the same time ; ' 
and he adds, that an ingenious and pious 
father was in the habit of giving this advice 
to his children, when they were married : 

" Doth one speak fire ? t'other with water come ! 
Is one provok'd ? be t'other soft and dumb." 

The following good counsel is from a wife 
and mother : "I will try to make myself and 
all around me agreeable. It will not do to leave 
a man to himself till he comes to you, to take 
no pains to attract him, to appear before him 
with a long face. It is not so difficult as you 
think, dear child, to behave to a husband so 
that he shall remain forever a husband. I 
am an old woman, but you can still do as you 
like ; a word from you at the right time will 
not fail of its effect ; what need have you to 
play the part of suffering virtue ? The tear of 
a loving girl, says an old book, is like a dew- 
drop on a rose ; but that on the cheek of a 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



307 



wife is a drop of poison to her husband. Try 
to appear cheerful and contented, and your 
husband will be so ; and when you have made 
him happy, you will become so in reality. 
Nothing flatters a man so much as the happi- 
ness of his wife ; he is always proud of him- 
self as being the source of it. As soon as 
you are cheerful you will be lively and alert, 
and allow no opportunity for speaking an 
agreeable word to pass. Your education, 
which gives you an immense advantage, will 
greatly assist you, and your sensibility will 
become the noblest gift that nature has 
bestowed on you, when it shows itself in 
affectionate assiduity, and stamps on every 
action a soft, kind, tender character, instead 
of wasting itself in secret repinings." 

Let both parties consider, when they enter 
upon the duties of domestic life, that the 
rights of each are equal ; and let each feel 
that it is as much a duty to do right as to exact 
right. Let each consider, that, being brought 
up in different families, and under different 
influences, it is but natural to expect that 
each should have opinions, and perhaps pre- 
judices, different from the other ; and that 



308 AFTER MARRIAGE. 

the right of each to his, or her, opinion, is 
equal to that of the other. Let each remem- 
ber, that the happiness of life depends upon 
harmony, — that nothing will be gained by 
strife. Hence, let each consider whether his, 
or her peculiar notions, are matters of prin- 
ciple, or matters of opinion and taste. If 
the former, let each regard the other's as 
sacred. Do not trifle with them. If the 
latter, let each one consider the liability of 
every one to err, and try to think and feel 
alike. Talk over the matter, not for the 
purpose of convincing, but for the purpose 
of understanding each other. Weigh each 
other's reasons fairly, and be willing to give 
all reasonable credit. In a matter of principle, 
it will also be proper, if both agree, for each 
to state the subject of difference fairly, and 
give the reasons for the difference. Reflect 
much upon the points of difference with a 
view to the reconciliation of differences, and 
always be ready to yield a point when con- 
vinced of error. On all important subjects, 
as they affect the interests of both, take 
counsel together before acting. Whatever 
affects both should be understood and decided 



AFTER MARRIAGE. 



309 



by both. Avoid having separate interests. 
Whatever may be said in favor of these, they 
are certainly unnatural in domestic life, and 
cannot fail to mar domestic happiness. There 
can be no separate interests — whatever affects 
one must affect the other. Never deceive 
each other. The loss of confidence is one of 
the greatest evils that can befall a married 
pair. It destroys all domestic comfort, and 
renders home a scene of turmoil and confusion. 
When confidence is lost, all is lost. In fine, 
let each strive to please the other, even in 
little things ; (the whole of life is made up of 
little things ;) and you will not fail to please. 
If you see a fault in your companion, think if 
you have not greater, and be as ready to 
correct your own, as to require a correction 
of your companion. Let each lay aside every 
cause of offense to the other, that everything 
may go on smoothly, that the burden of life 
may be easily borne. 






XXXVIII. 

ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 

"When a man hath taken a new wife he shall not 
go to war, neither shall he be charged with any busi- 
ness ; but he shall be free at home one year, and cheer 
up the wife which he has taken." — Deut. 24:5. 

MAN who avoids matrimony on ac- 
count of the cares of wedded life> 
cuts himself off from a great blessing 
for fear of a trifling annoyance. He rivals the 
wiseacre who secured himself against corns 
by having his legs amputated. In his selfish 
anxiety to live unencumbered, he only subjects 
himself to a heavier burden ; for the passions, 
that apportion to every individual the load he 
is to bear through life, generally say to the 
calculating bachelor — " As you are a single 
man you shall carry double." The Assurance 
Magazine, an English periodical, makes the 
statement, that in the two periods of life, 20 

310 



ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 



311 



to 2 5 and 2 5 to 30, the probability of a widower 
marrying in a year is nearly three times as 
great as that of a bachelor ; at 30 it is four 
times as great ; at 60 the chances of a widower 
marrying in the year is eleven times as great 
as that of a bachelor. After the age of 30 the 
probability of a bachelor marrying in a year 
diminishes in a most rapid ratio ; the proba- 
bility at 35 is not much more than half that 
at 30, and nearly the same proportion exists 
between each period of five years afterwards. 
None but the married man has a home in his 
old age. None has friends then, but he ; none 
but he knows and feels the solace of the 
domestic hearth ; none but he lives and 
freshens in his green old age, amid the affec- 
tions of his children. There is no tear shed 
for the old bachelor ; there is no ready hand 
and kind heart to cheer him in his loneliness 
and bereavement ; there is none in whose eyes 
he can see himself reflected, and from whose 
lips he can receive the unfailing assurances of 
care and love. He may be courted for his 
money ; he may eat and drink and revel ; and 
he may sicken and die in a hotel or a garret, 
with plenty of attendants about him, like so 



312 



ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 



many cormorants waiting for their prey ; but 
he will never know the comforts of the do- 
mestic fireside. 

The guardians of the Holborn Union lately 
advertised for candidates to fill the situation 
of engineer at the workhouse, a single man, a 
wife not being allowed to reside on the prem- 
ises. Twenty-one candidates presented them- 
selves, but it was found that as to testimonials, 
character, workmanship, and appearance, the 
best men were all married men. The guard- 
ians had therefore to elect a married man. 

A married man, falling into misfortune, is 
more apt to retrieve his situation in the world 
than a single one, chiefly because his spirits 
are soothed and retrieved by domestic endear- 
ments, and his self-respect kept alive by find- 
ing, that although all abroad be darkness and 
humiliation, yet there is a little world of love 
at home over which he is a monarch. Jeremy 
Taylor says, " If you are for pleasure, marry ; 
if you prize rosy health, marry. A good wife 
is heaven's last best gift to man — his angel of 
mercy — minister of graces innumerable — his 
gem of many virtues — his casket of jewels — 
her voice, his sweetest music — her smiles, his 



ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 313 

brightest day— her kiss the guardian of inno- 
cence — her arms the pale of his safety, the 
balm of his health, the balsam of his life — her 
industry, his surest wealth — her economy, his 
safest steward — her lips, his faithful counsellors 
— her bosom the softest pillow of his cares — 
and her prayers the ablest advocates of 
heaven." He considered marriage " a nursery 
of heaven," and "the greatest interest in the 
world next to the last throw for eternity." 

Doubtless you have remarked with satisfac- 
tion, says a writer in Frazers Magazine, the 
little oddities of men who marry rather late 
in life are pruned away speedily after marriage. 
You may have found a man who used to be 
shabbily and carelessly dressed, with huge 
shirt-collar frayed at the edges, and a glaring 
yellow silk pocket-handkerchief, broken of 
these and become a pattern of neatness. You 
have seen a man whose hair and whiskers 
were ridiculously cut, speedily become like 
other human beings. You have seen a clergy- 
man who wore a long beard in a little while 
appear without one. You have seen a man 
who used to sing ridiculous sentimental songs 
leave them off. You have seen a man who 



314 ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 

took snuff copiously, and who generally had 
his breast covered with snuff, abandon the 
vile habit. A wife is the grand wielder of 
the moral pruning knife. If Johnson's wife 
had lived, there would have been no hoarding 
of bits of orange peel ; no touching all the 
posts in walking along the street ; no eating 
and drinking with a disgusting voracity. If 
Oliver Goldsmith had been married, he would 
never have worn that memorable and ridicu- 
lous coat. Whenever you find a man whom 
you know little about, oddly dressed, or talking 
ridiculously, or exhibiting any eccentricity of 
manner, you may be tolerably sure that he is 
not a married man. For the little corners are 
rounded off, the shoots are pruned away, in 
married men. Wives generally have much 
more sense than their husbands, especially 
when the husbands are clever men. The 
wife's advices are like the ballast that keeps 
the ship steady. They are like the whole- 
some though painful shears snipping off the 
little growths of self-conceit and folly. 

Robert Southey says a man may be cheerful 
and contented in celibacy, but I do not think 
he can ever be happy ; it is an unnatural state, 



ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 3 i5 

and the best feelings of his nature are never 
called into action. The risks of marriage are 
for the greater part on the woman's side. 
Women have so little the power of choice, 
that it is not perhaps fair to say that they are 
less likely to choose well than we are ; but I 
am persuaded that they are more frequently 
deceived in the attachments they form, and 
their opinions concerning men are less accurate 
than men's opinion of their sex. Now, if a 
lady were to reproach me for having said this, 
I should only reply that it was another mode 
of saying there are more good wives in the 
world than there are good husbands, which I 
verily believe. I know of nothing which a 
good and sensible man is so certain to find, if 
he looks for it, as a good wife. 

Somebody has said, "before thou marry, 
be sure of a house wherein to tarry." And 
see, my friend, that you make your house a 
home. A house is a mere skeleton of bricks, 
laths, plaster, and wood ; a home is a residence 
not merely of the body but of the heart. It 
is a place for the affections to develop them- 
selves — for children to love, and learn, and 
play in — for husband and wife to toil smilingly 



316 



ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 



together to make life a blessing. A house 
where a wife is a slattern and a sloven cannot 
be a home ; a house where there is no happy 
fireside, no book, no newspaper — above all, 
where there is no religion and no Bible, how 
can it be a home? My bachelor brother, 
there cannot, by any possibility, be a home 
where there is no wife. To talk of a home 
without love, we might as well expect to find 
a New England fireside in one of the pyra- 
mids of Egypt. 

There is a world of wisdom in the following : 
" Every schoolboy knows that a kite would 
not fly unless it had a string tying it down. 
It is just so in life. The man who is tied 
down by half-a-dozen blooming responsibilities 
and their mother, will make a higher and 
stronger flight than the bachelor who, having 
nothing to keep him steady, is always floun- 
dering in the mud. If you want to ascend in 
the world, tie yourself to somebody." 

" Jenny is poor, and I am poor, 
Yet we will wed — so say no more ; 
And should the bairnies to us come, 
As few that wed but do have some ; 
No doubt but heaven will stand our friend, 
And bread as well as children send ; 



ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 317 

So fares the hen in the farmer's yard, 

To live alone she finds it hard ; 

I've known her weary every claw, 

In search of corn among the straw ; 

But when in quest of nicer food, 

She clucks among her chirping brood ; 

With joy we see the self-same hen, 

That scratched for one co'd scratch for ten. 

These are the tho'ts that make me willing 

To take my girl without a shilling ; 

And for the self-same cause, you see, 

Jenny resolves to marry me." 




XXXIX. 




TELL YOUR WIFE. 

m, F you are in any trouble or quandary, 
j|^J tell your wife — that is if you have one 
^KSi — all about it at once. Ten to one 
her invention will solve your difficulty sooner 
than all your logic. The wit of woman has 
been praised, but her instincts are quicker and 
keener than her reason. Counsel with your 
wife, or mother or sister, and be assured, 
light will flash upon your darkness. Women 
are too commonly adjudged as verdant in all 
but purely womanish affairs. No philosophical 
students of the sex thus judge them. Their 
intuitions, or insights, are the most subtle. In 
counseling a man to tell his wife, we would go 
farther, and advise him to keep none of his 
affairs a secret from her. Many a home has 
been happily saved, and many a fortune 
retrieved, by a man's full confidence in his 
" better half." Woman is far more a seer and 

3i8 



< 



TELL YOUR WIFE. 319 

prophet than man, if she be given a fair 
chance. 

We will say nothing of the manner in which 
that sex usually conduct an argument ; but 
the intuitive judgments of women are often 
more to be relied upon than the conclusions 
which we reach by an elaborate process of 
reasoning. No man that has an intelligent wife, 
or who is accustomed to the society of edu- 
cated women, will dispute this. Times with- 
out number you must have known them 
decide questions on the instant, and with un- 
erring accuracy, which you had been poring 
over for hours, perhaps, with no other result 
than to find yourself getting deeper and 
deeper into the tangled maze of doubts and 
difficulties. It were hardly generous to allege 
that they achieve these feats less by reasoning 
than by a sort of sagacity which approximates 
to the sure instinct of the animal races ; and 
yet there seems to be some ground for the 
remark of a witty French writer, that, when 
a man has toiled step by step up a flight of 
stairs he will be sure to find a woman at the 
top ; but she will not be able to tell how she 
got there. How she got there, however, is of 
little moment. If the conclusions a woman 



320 TELL YOUR WLFE. 

has reached are sound, that is all that con- 
cerns us. And that they are very apt to be 
sound on the practical matters of domestic and 
secular life, nothing but prejudice or self- 
conceit can prevent us from acknowledging. 
The inference, therefore, is unavoidable, that 
the man who thinks it beneath his dignity to 
take counsel with an intelligent wife, stands 
in his own light, and betrays that lack of 
judgment which he tacitly attributes to her. 

As a general rule, wives confide the mi- 
nutest of their plans and thoughts to their 
husbands, having no involvements to screen 
from them. Why not reciprocate, if but for 
the pleasure of meeting confidence with confi- 
dence ? We are certain that no man succeeds 
so well in the world as he who, taking a partner 
for life, makes her the partner of his purposes 
and hopes. What is wrong of his impulse or 
judgment, she will check and set right with 
her almost universally right instincts. " Help- 
meet " was no insignificant title as applied to 
man's companion. She is a help-meet to him 
in every darkness, difficulty and sorrow of 
life. And what she most craves and most 
deserves is confidence — without which love is 
never free from a shadow. 



XL. 




COURTESY AT HOME. 

OW much a sincere and hearty polite- 
ness may do for others, is readily 
tested and measured by all who have 
learned to appreciate it for themselves. 
While it is comparatively easy to be courteous 
toward strangers, or toward people of dis- 
tinction, whom one meets in society or on 
public occasions, still it should be remembered 
that it is at home, in the family, and among 
kindred, that an every-day politeness of 
manners is really most to be prized. There 
it confers substantial benefits and brings the 
sweetest returns. The little attentions which 
members of the same household may show 
toward one another day by day belong, in 
fact, to what is styled " good breeding." 
There cannot be any ingrained gentility which 
does not exhibit itself first at home. There, 
of all places in the world, it will be able to 
21 321 



322 COURTESY AT HOME. 

demonstrate how much genuine politeness 
there is in the heart. A well-ordered family 
cannot afford to dispense with the observance 
of the good rules of mutual intercourse which 
are enforced in good society. A churlish, 
sour, morose deportment at home is simply 
cruel, for it cuts into the tenderest sensibilities 
and hurts love just where love is strongest 
and most loyal. Parents and children, 
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, 
never lose anything by mutual politeness ; on 
the contrary, by maintaining not only its 
forms, but by the inward cultivation of its 
spirit, they become contributors to that 
domestic felicity which is, in itself, a foretaste 
of heaven. 

No pleasanter sight is there, than a family 
of young folks who are quick to perform little 
acts of attention toward their elders. The 
placing of the big arm-chair for mamma, 
running for a footstool for aunty, hunting up 
papa's spectacles, and scores of little deeds, 
show the tender sympathy of gentle loving 
hearts ; but if mamma never returns a smiling 
"Thank you, dear;" if papa's "Just what I 
was wanting, Susie," does not indicate that 



COURTESY AT HOME. 323 

the little attention is appreciated, the children 
soon drop the habit. Little people are imita- 
tive creatures, and quickly catch the spirit 
surrounding them. So if, when the mother's 
spool of cotton rolls from her lap, the father 
stoops to pick it up, bright eyes will see the 
act, and quick minds make a note of it. By 
example, a thousand times more quickly than 
by precept, can children be taught to speak 
kindly to each other, to acknowledge favors, 
to be gentle and unselfish, to be thoughtful 
and considerate of the comfort of the family. 
The boys, with inward pride of their father's 
courteous demeanor, will be chivalrous and 
helpful to their young sisters ; the girls, 
imitating their mother, will be patient and 
gentle, even when big brothers are noisy and 
heedless. In the homes where true courtesy 
prevails, it seems to meet you on the threshold. 
You feel the kindly welcome on entering. 
No angry voices are heard up-stairs. No 
sullen children are sent from the room. No 
peremptory orders are given to cover the 
delinquencies of house-keeping or servants. 
A delightful atmosphere pervades the house 
— unmistakable, yet indescribable. 



324 



COURTESY AT HOME. 



Such a house, filled by the spirit of love, is 
a home indeed to all who enter within its 
consecrated walls. 

Speak kindly in the morning; it lightens 
the cares of the day, and makes the household 
and all other affairs move along more smoothly. 

Speak kindly at night, for it may be that 
before the dawn some loved one may finish 
his or her space of life, and it will be too late 
to ask forgiveness. 

Speak kindly at all times ; it encourages 
the downcast, cheers the sorrowing, and very 
likely awakens the erring to earnest resolves 
to do better, with strength to keep them. 

Kind words are balm to the soul. They 
oil up the entire machinery of life, and keep 
it in good running order. 





XLI. 
HOME GOVERNMENT. 

HE importance of sacredly guarding the 
family relation cannot well be over- 
estimated. It is the foundation-stone 
of all that is good and pure both in civilization 
and religion. Take this away, and the whole 
fabric must topple and fall. Would you look 
into the future as with the spirit of prophecy, 
and read as with a telescope the history and 
character of our country, and of other coun- 
tries ? You have but to watch the eyes of 
children at play. 

What children are, neighborhoods are. 
What neighborhoods are, communities are, — 
states, empires, worlds ! They are the elements 
of Hereafter made visible. 

They are the flowers of the invisible world, 
— indestructible, self-perpetuating flowers, 
with each a * multitude of angels and evil 

325 



26 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 



spirits underneath its leaves, toiling and wrest- 
ling for dominion over it! They are the blos- 
soms of another world, whose fruitage is angels 
and archangels. They are dew-drops that 
have their source, not in the chambers of the 
earth, nor among the vapors of the sky. 

The very tones of the voice they last lis- 
tened to make an impression upon their sen- 
sitive organizations. Mothers, do not think 
the time and strength wasted, which you 
spend in reviewing the day with your little 
boy or girl ; do not neglect to teach it how to 
pray, and pray for it in simple and earnest 
language, which it can understand. Soothe 
and quiet its little heart after the experiences 
of the day. It has had its disappointments 
and trials as well as its play and pleasures ; it 
is ready to throw its arms around your neck, 
and take its good-night kiss. 

Always send your little child to bed happy. 
Whatever cares may trouble your mind, give 
the dear child a warm good-night kiss as it 
goes to its pillow. The memory of this, in 
the stormy years which may be in store for 
the little one, will be like Bethlehem's star 
to the bewildered shepherds ; and welling up 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 327 

in the heart will rise the thought : " My father, 
my mother — loved me / " Lips parched with 
fever will become dewy again at this thrill of 
useful memories. Kiss your little child before 
it goes to sleep. 

Always allow them to tell you all that has 
happened to interest or annoy them while 
absent from home. Never think anything 
which affects the happiness of your children 
too small a matter to claim your attention. 
Use every means in your power to win and 
retain their confidence. Do not rest satisfied 
without some account of each day's joys or 
sorrows. It is a source of great comfort to 
the innocent child to tell all its troubles to 
mother, and do you lend a willing ear. For 
know you, that as soon as they cease to tell 
you all these things, they have chosen other 
confidants, and therein lies the danger. O 
mother ! this is the rock on which your son 
may be wrecked at last. I charge you to set 
a watch upon it. Be jealous of the first sign 
that he is not opening all his heart to you. 

Government is not to watch children with a 
suspicious eye, to frown at the merry outbursts 
of innocent hilarity, to suppress their joyous 



3^ 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 



laughter, and to mould them into melancholy 
little models of octogenarian gravity. And 
when they have been in fault, it is not simply to 
punish them on acount of the personal injury 
that you have chanced to suffer in consequence 
of their fault, while disobedience, unattended 
by inconvenience to yourself, passes without 
notice. 

Reprove with calmness and composure, and 
not with angry irritation, — in a few words, 
fitly chosen, and not with a torrent of abuse ; 
punish as often as you threaten, and threaten 
only when you intend and can remember to 
perform ; say what you mean, and infallibly 
do as you say. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that what 
will make a child stare or tremble impresses 
more authority. The violent emphasis, the 
hard, stormy voice, the menacing air, only 
weaken authority. Is it not well understood, 
that a bawling" and' violent teamster has no 
real government over his team? Is it not 
practically seen that a skillful commander of 
one of those huge floating cities, moved by 
steam on our American waters, manages and 
works every motion by the waving of the 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 329 

hand, or by signs that pass in silence, issuing 
no order at all, save in the gentlest undertone 
of voice ? So when there is, or is to be, a real 
order in the house, it will come of no hard 
and boisterous, or fretful and termagant way 
of commanding. Gentleness will speak the 
word of firmness, and firmness will be clothed 
in that of true gentleness. 

Good moral habits are essential to the 
healthfulness of the home ; and these may be 
best taught by the watchful mother's training. 
One important part of her work is to remove 
hindrances out of her children's way to health 
and happiness. No dirt, or dirty habits, for 
example, should be permitted; Washing 
their hands and faces many times in the day 
will often remove a sense of discomfort which 
makes them fretful, as also will giving them 
food at regular periods. Ragged dress, too, 
and broken fastenings, add a feeling of degra- 
dation, that a careful mother will prevent as 
far as possible by keeping their clothes whole, 
neat, and clean. Making their own garments, 
we may here remark, gives useful employ- 
ment to girls, and is an important aid in train- 
ing them to thrifty habits. Many families go 



33° 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 



in rags because they never learned to sew ; 
while the same wages in the hands of those 
who know how to employ that useful " one- 
eyed servant," the needle, keep the household 
looking always respectable. 

Never scold children, but soberly and 
quietly reprove. Do not employ shame ex- 
cept in extreme cases. The suffering is acute ; 
it hurts self-respect in the child to reprove a 
child before the family ; to ridicule it, to tread 
down its feelings ruthlessly, is to wake in its 
bosom malignant feelings. A child is defence- 
less ; he is not allowed to argue. He is often 
tried, condemned, and executed in a second. 
He finds himself of little use. He is put at 
things he don't care for, and withheld from 
things which he does like. He is made the 
convenience of grown-up people ; is hardly 
supposed to have any rights, except in a cor- 
ner, as it were ; is sent hither and thither ; 
made to get up or sit down for everybody's 
convenience but his own ; is snubbed and 
catechised until he learns to dodge govern- 
ment and elude authority, and then be whipped 
for being " such a liar that no one can believe 
you." 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 331 

Parents often speak of breaking the will of 
a child ; but it seems to us they had better 
break its neck. The will needs regulating, 
not destroying. We should as soon think of 
breaking the legs of a horse in training him, 
as a child's will. We never yet heard of a 
will in itself too strong, more than of an arm 
too mighty, or a mind too comprehensive in 
its grasp, or too powerful in its hold. We 
would discipline and develop the will into 
harmonious proportions. The instruction of 
a child should be such as to animate, inspire 
and train, but not to hew, cut and carve ; for 
we should always treat a child as a live tree, 
which was to be helped to grow ; never as 
dry, dead timber, to be carved into this or that 
shape, and have certain grooves cut in it. A 
living tree, and not dead timber, is every little 
child. 

Mothers, don't whip them ! Treat God's 
lambs tenderly. Compel obedience, but not 
with the rod. The other evening the maternal 
face appeared at the door of a pleasant little 
home I had often noticed, and loudly ordered 
a little lad of three or so to " come in and see 
if she did not do as she said she would." The 



332 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 



mother, in her wrath at being disobeyed, re- 
entered the house, not hearing the little one's 
sobbing explanation that he had stepped out- 
side to bring the baby in. Directly the blows 
and piteous cries fell upon my ears. Un- 
doubtedly the little one had gone beyond the 
prescribed bounds ; but it was to bring the 
wee toddling thing inside, who as yet heeded 
not commands, however harshly given, and 
his full heart and meagre use of words with- 
held the power of explanation. Poor little 
man, how my heart ached for him ! Kissless 
and sad he went to bed. Mothers, do not 
whip them ! Do not yourselves make shadows 
in the sunlight with which God always sur- 
rounds children. Do not let them be lulled 
to sleep by the falling of their tears, or by 
their own sad sobs and sighs. Far pleasanter 
it is when you go to tuck them in at night, 
to find pink feet on the pillow, dimpled knees 
in air, toys yet in embrace and smiles on 
their sweet mouths. Yourselves bear in mind 
their last words, " If I should die before I 
wake." Treat them tenderly. I took my little 
man a shot-gun to-night, handing it over the 
gate, I said, " Now will you mind your mamma, 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 333 

and stay inside when she tells you ?■" I am 
sure the "me will" was very sincere; but if 
they forget, bear with them. If childhood's 
days cannot be free from sorrow, surely none 
ever may. 

They will not trouble you long. Children 
grow up — nothing on earth grows so fast as 
children. It was but yesterday, and that lad 
was playing with tops, a buoyant boy. He is 
a man, and gone now ! There is no more 
childhood for him, or for us. Life has claimed 
him. When a beginning is made, it is like a 
raveling stocking ; stitch by stitch gives way 
till all are gone. The house has not a child 
in it — there is no more noise in the hall — boys 
rushing in pell-mell ; it is very orderly now. 
There are no more skates or sleds, bats, balls 
or strings left scattered about. Things are 
neat enough now. There is no delay for 
sleepy folks ; there is no longer any task, 
before you lie down, of looking after anybody, 
and tucking up the bedclothes. There are no 
disputes to settle, nobody to get off to school, 
no complaint, no importunities for impossible 
things, no rips to mend, no fingers to tie up, 
no faces to be washed, or collars to be ar- 



334 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 



ranged. There never was such peace in the 
house ! It would sound like music to have 
some feet clatter down the front stairs ! Oh 
for some children's noise ! What used to ail 
us, that we were hushing their loud laugh, 
checking their noisy frolic, and reproving 
their slamming and banging the doors ? We 
wish our neighbors would only lend us an 
urchin or two to make a little noise in these 
premises. A home without children ! It is 
like a lantern and no candle ; a garden and 
no flowers ; a vine and no grapes ; a brook 
and no water gurgling and gushing in its 
channel. We want to be tired, to be vexed, 
to be run over, to hear children at work with 
all its varieties. During the secular days, this 
is enough marked. But it is the Sabbath that 
puts our homes to the proof. That is the 
Christian family day. The intervals of public 
worship are long spaces of peace. The family 
seems made up on that day. The children are 
at home. You can lay your hands upon their 
heads. They seem to recognize the greater 
and lesser love — to God and to friends. The 
house is peaceful, but not still. There is a low 
and melodious thrill of children in it. But the 



HOME GOVERNMENT. 



335 



Sabbath comes too still now. There is a si- 
lence that aches in the ear. There is too much 
room at the table, too much at the hearth. 
The bedrooms are a world too orderly. There 
is too much leisure and too little care. Alas ! 
what mean these things ? Is somebody grow- 
ing old ? Are these signs and tokens ? Is life 
waning ? 












XLII. 

BROKEN TIES, 

OW many there are in every human 
experience ! How many even apart 
from those that death occasions ! 
Your memory goes back to the home of 
your childhood. All its belongings became, 
as it were, a part of your nature. You recall 
the familiar surroundings. Your interests 
were bound up with them. And then the 
time came when those ties must be sun- 
dered. You went forth from the old home 
into new scenes. You found these ties bind- 
ing themselves about you, but the old ones 
were broken. 

And so it has been all the way along. You 
became attached to persons and the shifting 
scenes of life have carried them away from 
you, and though you hear now and then of 
their well-being, the old intimacy is perforce 
gone, the old ties are sundered. The ties 

336 



BROKEN TIES. 



337 



that hold us to our surroundings are continu- 
ally breaking. No year is like that which 
preceded it, no month, no day even. 

Let us guard against those things that may 
give offense, or that may through any fault of 
ours break the tie that binds us to an old 
friend. There is the bitterness of parting and 
the added bitterness of self-reproach, the sad 
recollection of what might have been. 

And, since all things and relations change, 
since ties must be broken, it is well for us to 
learn to enjoy to the utmost our present. The 
time is coming when your home ties perhaps 
must be sundered. Enjoy, then, the present 
relations. It may be a humble home, and 
you are planning for one larger, and, to your 
imagination, more enjoyable. Very well ; 
only do not fail to take all the enjoyment you 
can from your present surroundings. Your 
friend will go to some distant place by and 
by. Enjoy his society while you have it. 
Your children, while they will always be 
your children, will nevertheless grow up and 
go out from the home -nest. The ties that 
bind you to their youth will be severed. En- 
joy them while you have them with you. It 
22 



338 BROKEN TIES. 

is well for us to plan as wisely as may be for 
the future ; but it is folly for us to seek 
our enjoyment in the future. Let us enjoy 
what we have now, for "change" is written 
on all our transitory and mutable life. It will 
be only when we have sundered the last bonds 
that bind us to this life .that we shall be where 
there is no more breaking of ties, no more 
regrets over pleasures that are gone, but 
sweet enjoyment of an eternal present. 




XLIII. 

BREVITY OF LIFE. 

Like to the falling of a star, 
Or as the flights of eagles are, 
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, 
Or silver drops of morning dew, 
Or like a wind that chafes the flood, 
Or bubbles which on water stood — 
E'en such is man, whose borrowed light 
Is straight called in, and paid to-night. 
The wind blows out, the bubble dies, 
The spring entombed in autumn lies, 
The dew dries up, the star is shot, 
The flight is past — and man forgot ! 

LITTLE while ago we were not in the 
world — a little while hence we shall 
be here no longer. This is arith- 
metic. This is the clock. Demosthenes used 
to say that every speech should begin with an 
incontrovertible proposition. Now, it is scien- 
tifically incontrovertible that a little while ago, 
we were not here, and a little while hence we 
shall be here no more. 

339 




340 



BREVITY OF LIFE. 



How distinctly we remember longing for the 
time when we should be eighteen or twenty 
years old ; how long the time seemed then ; 
how short as we look back upon it. Ask any 
aged person how long since he or she was a 
child, and the answer will be, " it seems but as 
yesterday." 

Old age is honorable, and a multitude of 
years teach wisdom. How pleasant to con- 
verse with the aged of the times fifty, three- 
score, or even threescore and ten years since. 
Some young people, children and grand-chil- 
dren, are impatient of old age, while others 
have a filial delight in their company, and love 
to care for them, and tenderly lessen their 
burdens. Old age, however serene the con- 
science and well-spent the life, has its sadness. 
After all their care and toil, the provision they 
have made for themselves, and children on 
whom they wish to lean in the decline of life, 
they have a dread and fear of being a burden. 

If you would make the aged happy, lead 
them to feel that there is still a place for them 
where they can be useful. When you see 
their powers failing, do not notice it. It is 
enough for them to feel it, without a reminder. 
Do not humiliate them by doing things after 



BREVITY OF LIFE. 



341 



them. Accept their offered services, and do 
not let them see you taking off the dust their 
poor eye-sight has left undisturbed, or wiping 
up the liquid their trembling hands have 
spilled ; rather let the dust remain, and the 
liquid stain the carpet, than rob them of their 
self-respect by seeing you cover their deficien- 
cies. You may give them the best room in 
your house, you may garnish it with pictures, 
and flowers, you may yield them the best seat 
in your church-pew, the easiest chair in your 
parlor, the highest seat of honor at your table ; 
but if you lead, or leave, them to feel that they 
have passed their usefulness, you plant a thorn 
in their bosom that will rankle there while 
life lasts. If they are capable of doing noth- 
ing but preparing your kindlings, or darning 
your stockings, indulge them in those things, 
but never let them feel that it is because they 
can do nothing else ; rather that they do this 
so well. 

Do not ignore their taste and judgment. 
It may be that in their early days, and in the 
circle where they move, they were as much 
sought and honored as you are now ; and 
until you arrive at that place, you can ill 
imagine your feelings should you be considered 



342 BREVITY OF LIFE. 

entirely void of their qualities, be regarded 
as essential to no one, and your opinions be 
unsought, or discarded if given. They may 
have been active and successful in the training 
of children and youth in the way they should 
go ; and will they not feel it keenly, if no 
attempt is made to draw from this rich ex- 
perience ? 

Indulge them as far as possible in their old 
habits. The various forms of society in which 
they were educated may be as dear to them 
as yours are now to you ; and can they see 
them slighted or disowned without a pang ? 
If they relish their meals better by turning 
their tea into the saucer, having their butter 
on the same plate with their food, or eating 
with both knife and fork, do not in word or 
deed imply to them that the customs of their 
days are obnoxious in good society ; and that 
they are stepping down from respectability 
as they descend the hill-side of life. Always 
bear in mind that the customs of which you 
are now so tenacious may be equally repug- 
nant to the next generation. 

It cannot be that earth is man's only abiding 
place. It cannot be that our life is a bubble, 
cast up by the ocean of eternity, to float 



BREVITY OF LIFE. 



343 



another moment upon its surface, and then 
sink into nothingness and darkness forever. 
Else why is it that the high and glorious 
aspirations which leap like angels from the 
temples of our hearts, are forever wandering 
abroad, unsatisfied ? 

Why is it that the rainbow and the cloud 
come over us with a beauty that is not of 
earth, and then pass off and leave us to muse 
on their faded loveliness ? 

Why is it that the stars which hold their 
festival around the midnight throne are set 
above the grasp of our limited faculties, and 
are forever mocking us with their unapproach- 
able glory ? 

Finally, why is it that bright forms of human 
beauty are presented to the view, and then 
taken from us, leaving the thousand streams 
of the affections to flow back in an Alpine 
torrent upon our hearts ? 

We are born for a higher destiny than that 
of earth. There is a realm where the rainbow 
never fades ; where the stars will be spread 
out before us like the islands that slumber on 
the ocean ; and where the beautiful beings 
that here pass before us like visions will stay 
in our presence forever! 




XLIV. 
THE SILENT SHORE. 

HE beautiful have gone with their 
bloom from the gaze of human eyes. 
Soft eyes that made it springtime to 
our hearts are seen no more. We have loved 
the light of many a smile that has faded from 
us now ; and in our hearts have lingered sweet 
voices that now are hushed in the silence of 
death. Seats are left vacant in our earthly 
homes, which none again can fill. Kindred 
and friends, loved ones, have passed away 
one by one ; our hearts are left desolate ; we 
are lonely without them. They have passed 
with their love to " that land, from whose 
bourne no traveler returns." Shall we never 
see them again ? Memory turns with linger- 
ing regret to recall those smiles and the loved 
tone of those dear familiar voices. In fancy 
they are often by our side, but their home is 

344 



THE SILENT SHORE. 



345 



on a brighter shore. They visit us in our 
dreams, floating over our memory like shadows 
over moonlit waters. When the heart is 
weary with anguish, and the soul is bowed 
with grief, do they not come and whisper 
thoughts of comfort and hope ? Yes, sweet 
memory brings them to us, and the love we 
bore them lifts the heart from earthly aspira- 
tions, and we long to join them in that better 
land. 

We may feel sad because they are lost to 
us ; but while we weep and wonder, they are 
wrapped in garments of light, and warble 
songs of celestial joy. They will return to us 
no more ; but we shall go to them ; share 
their pleasures ; emulate their sympathies ; 
and compete with them in the path of endless 
development. We would not call them back. 
In the homes above they are great, and well- 
employed and blest. Shadows fall upon them 
no more ; nor is life ruffled with anxious cares ; 
love rules their life and thoughts ; and eternal 
hopes beckon them forever to the pursuit of 
infinite good. 

To whom are these thoughts strange and 
dull ? Who has no treasure in Heaven — well- 



346 THE SILENT SHORE. 

remembered forms hallowed by separation 
and distance — stars of hope illumining with 
ever increasing beauty life's utmost horizon ? 
What family circle has remained unbroken 
— no empty chair — no cherished mementoes — 
voices and footsteps returning no more — no 
members transferred to the illimitable beyond ? 
Where is he who has stood unhurt amid 
the chill blasts, that have blighted mortal 
hopes, and withered mortal loves ? Alas ! 
the steps of death are everywhere ; his voice 
murmuring in every sweep of the wind ; his 
ruins visible on towering hill and in seques- 
tered vale. We all have felt or seen his power. 
Beneath the cypress we rest and weep ; our 
hearts riven with memories of the loved and 
lost ; and yet hope springing eternal from 
earth's mausoleums to penetrate and possess 
the future. 

Faith penetrates the veil, and bids the in- 
visible stand disclosed ; while its magic wand 
wakens into life forms well-known, but holier 
and lovelier far than we knew them here. 
Such thoughts make us better, purer, gentler. 
We cannot keep society with the sainted dead, 
and with the great God in whose presence 



THE SILENT SHORE. 347 

they dwell, without feeling a nobler life 
throbbing through us. They draw us upward. 
We grow less earthly, more heavenly ; and 
God-like aspirations come to us, as we wander 
along the border land where dwell the sainted 
dead. 

" The sorrow for the dead," says Irving, 
" is the only sorrow from which we refuse to 
be divorced. Every other wound we seek to 
heal, every other affliction to forget ; but this 
wound we consider it a duty to keep open ; 
this afBiction we cherish and brood over in 
solitude. 

" Where is the mother who would willingly 
forget the infant that perished like a blossom 
from her arms, though every recollection is a 
pang? Where is the child that would willingly 
forget the most tender of parents, though to 
remember be but to lament ? Who, even in 
the hour of agony, would forget the friend 
over whom he mourns? Who, even when 
the tomb is closing upon the remains of her 
he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it 
were, crushed in the closing of its portal, 
would accept of consolation that must be 
bought by forgetfulness ? 



348 THE SILENT SHORE. 

" No ; the love which survives the tomb is 
one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If 
it has its woes, it has likewise its delights ; 
and when the overwhelming burst of grief is 
calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, 
when the sudden anguish and the convulsive 
agony over the ruins of all we most loved is 
softened away into pensive meditation on all 
that it was in the days of its loveliness, who 
would root out such a sorrow from the heart? 

" Though it may sometimes throw a passing 
cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread 
a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet 
who would exchange it even for the song of 
pleasure or the burst of revelry ? No ; there 
is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. 
There is a remembrance of the dead to which 
we turn even from the charms of the living. 

" Oh, the grave ! the grave ! It buries 
every error, covers every defect, extinguishes 
every resentment. From its peaceful bosom 
spring none but fond regrets and tender 
recollections. Who can look upon the grave 
even of an enemy, and not feel a compunc- 
tious throb that he should ever have warred 
with the poor handful of earth that lies moul- 
dering before him ? 



THE SILENT SHORE. 



349 



" But the grave of those we loved, what a 
place for meditation ! There it is that we 
call up in long review the whole history of 
virtue and gentleness, and the thousand en- 
dearments lavished upon us almost unheeded 
in the daily intercourse of intimacy. There 
it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the 
solemn, awful tenderness of the parting scene. 

" The bed of death, with all its stifled 
griefs, its noiseless attendants, its mute, watch- 
ful assiduities, , the last testimonies of expir- 
ing love, the feeble, fluttering, thrilling, oh, 
how thrilling ! pressure of the hand. The 
last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon 
us even from the threshold of existence. The 
faint, faltering accents struggling in death to 
give one more assurance of affection. Aye, 
go to the grave of buried love and meditate ! 
There settle the account with thy conscience 
for every past benefit unrequited, every past 
endearment unregarded, of that departed being 
who can never — never — never return to be 
soothed by thy contrition ! 

" If thou art a child, and hast ever added a 
sorrow to the soul or a furrow to the silver 
brow of an affectionate parent ; if thou art a 



3 5o THE SILENT SHORE. 

husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom 
that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms 
to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy 
truth ; if thou art a friend, and hast ever 
wronged, in thought, or word, or deed, the 
spirit that generously confided in thee ; if thou 
art a lover, and hast given one unmerited 
pang to that true heart which now lies cold 
and still beneath thy feet ; then be sure every 
unkind look, every ungracious word, every 
ungentle action, will come thronging back 
upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at 
thy soul ; then be sure that thou wilt lie down 
sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and 
utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavail- 
ing tear, more deep, more bitter, because un- 
heard and unavailing. 

"Then weave thy chaplet of flowers, and 
strew the beauties of nature about the grave ; 
console thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with 
these tender, yet futile tributes of regret; but 
take warning by the bitterness of this thy con- 
trite affliction over the dead, and henceforth 
be more faithful and affectionate in the dis- 
charge of thy duties to the living." 

When we are dead, there will be some 



THE SILENT SHORE. 351 

honest sorrow. A few will be really sad, as 
we are robed for the grave. Fewer, probably, 
than we now suppose. We are vain enough 
to think our departure will produce considera- 
ble sensation. But we over-estimate it. Out 
of a small circle how soon shall we be forgot- 
ten ! A single leaf of a boundless forest has 
fallen ! That is all. 

" The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone ; the solemn brood of care 
Plod on ; and each one, as before, will chase 
His favorite phantom." 

When we are dead, affection may erect a 
monument. But the hand that set it up will 
soon be as powerless as ours, and for the same 
cause. How soon they that weep over us 
will follow us ! The monument itself will 
crumble, and it will fall on the dust that covers 
us. If the marble or the granite long endures, 
yet the eye of affection will not endure to 
read the graven letters. Men will give a 
glance at the name of one they never knew, 
and pass on with not a thought of the slum- 
berer below. 

Deplorable indeed, is the state of him, who, 



3 52 THE SILENT SHORE. 

having run through life's brief years in the 
sweet sunshine of comfort and earthly happi- 
ness, comes at length to the unwelcome hour 
when Death summons him away, and who, as 
he glances his spirit's eye through the vast 
future that awaits him, sees no cheering light, 
no rising sun, to gladden his endless career, 
and remembers, with bitterness of soul, that 
although he has rejoiced in many years upon 
the earth, many, many " days of darkness " 
now lie before him, even an Eternity of sorrow 
and unavailing repentance. 

Thrice happy he, whose path is that of the 
just, which, beaming brighter and brighter 
day by day, is lost at length in the noontide 
splendors of the Heavenly Glory! 







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